Torture Showdown Coming?

Lara Jakes Jordan writes for the Associated Press: "'It's like finding out that your town fire chief is an arsonist,' said Jeff Ruch, executive director of Public Employees for Environmental Protection, a whistle-blower group."

Saving Burma

Amy Kazmin writes in The Washington Post that as the number of dead and missing in the Burma cyclone soared past 60,000 Tuesday, "President Bush offered to send U.S. Navy units to help in the operation, and sharply criticized Burma's military-run government for delays in approving visas for emergency teams. Burmese dissident groups took issue with the timing of the administration's criticism, suggesting it could complicate the relief effort."

Kazmin writes that other foreign governments, including Western countries that usually spurn Burma's leaders as pariahs, have responded to the unprecedented appeal for international help in a way that "could presage the largest foreign engagement with Burma in its troubled history since it achieved independence from Britain in 1948.

"'There is a real potential for this to be a game-changing moment,' said Sean Turnell, a professor at Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia, and editor of Burma Economic Watch. He noted foreign offers to help Indonesia after its Aceh province was devastated in the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami. 'After the tsunami, the whole conversation changed,' he said. The U.S. Navy helped with the effort in Aceh."

I wrote in yesterday's column about First Lady Laura Bush's belligerent response to the disaster.

Kazmin writes that "exiled Burmese political analyst Aung Naing Oo, who fled Burma in 1988 and is now based in Thailand, labeled Laura Bush's attack as 'totally and utterly inappropriate.'

"'She is trying to score political points out of people's disaster,' he said. 'That will clearly not go down well with anyone in Burma. This is about humanitarian issues -- people are dying. This is a time for the U.S. government to say, 'We are giving you money.' They don't need to score political points here.'

"Ye Htut, a Burmese government spokesman, also accused the first lady of politicizing the tragedy. 'I would like to say that what we are doing is better than the Bush administration response to the Katrina storm in 2005, if you compare the resources of the two countries,' he told reporters."

Seth Mydans writes in the New York Times that "some international aid workers and foreign leaders said they feared that political pressure could make it more difficult to deliver aid quickly. . . .

"Australia's foreign minister, Stephen Smith, was among those who urged countries to focus on helping Myanmar instead of criticizing its government. 'The priority now is rendering assistance to thousands of displaced people who urgently need our assistance,' Mr. Smith said in Hong Kong.

"Likewise, Joel Charny, vice president for policy at Refugees International, a Washington-based aid organization, said the Bush administration's approach could be counterproductive. 'To stand up and say, "One message is we want to help and the other message is the government is incompetent, and oh, by the way, tomorrow we're giving a Congressional medal to Aung San Suu Kyi," well, that gets their back up,' Mr. Charny said. 'I'm not saying the U.S. shouldn't have concerns about democracy. I'm saying that the idea is you try to make it easier rather than harder for the regime to take on international assistance.'

"White House officials countered that Myanmar's military leaders had long known the United States' position on human rights abuses there, and should be doing all they could to get help to the ravaged areas quickly.