The Guardian reports that some of the information leading to the arrests of alleged terrorist plotters in London may have been procured under torture (via Doug Krile):

It’s important that we realize that this latest news presents a challenge to one of the biggest arguments against torture — that information produced under duress is often unreliable. As expected, conservatives pounced on the news. Here’s what Karol Sheinin, writing for MichelleMalkin.com, had to say:

That’s a nice sleight-of-hand — Sheinin derides discussion of torture “in a general sense,” and then discusses torture in a general sense. She’s unwilling to name the barbaric acts of which she approves: “uncomfortable conditions” are what one experiences when the air conditioning goes out in 90 degree weather; waterboarding, electric shocks, sleep deprivation, and anal rape are what one experiences when one is “rendered” by the United States Government.

The first condition of any sort of dialogue on this matter involves an honest description of it, rather than a cynical and politically motivated minimization of what torture truly entails. It’s particularly important because the entire process of what The New Yorker calls “the outsourcing of torture” depends upon an effort to keep American citizens ignorant of what is being done in their — in our — names.

So, let’s welcome this chance to educate Americans about what “uncomfortable conditions” really means — and let’s start with the videos from The Abu Ghraib Files. Let’s ask our fellow citizens to watch the videos of Iraqi prisoners being forced to masturbate in front of the camera, the footage of Iraqis being shocked by electric nodes, the images of them being stacked naked in pyramids. And then let’s talk about what “uncomfortable conditions” really means.

Writing for Alternet last year, Brig. Gen. David R. Irvine summed up the need for a robust and honest dialogue about torture:

A year later, conservative writers and administration officials are still preventing that debate from taking place. Until that changes, torture will remain our national shame.

Update: Please see my comments on this post at the end of the next one.

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Several conservative bloggers, including Michelle Malkin, Andrew Sullivan, Glenn Reynolds at Instapundit, and Paul at Wizbang, have accused liberals of playing politics with Hurricane Katrina.

Malkin quotes Paul at Wizbang, who writes:

One commenter on the Wizbang post echoes this point:

Another commenter picks up on the bad grammar and misspellings and drives home the point in all of its fifth-grade reading-comprehension glory:

Glenn Reynolds makes a similar point as he criticizes “various people” who claim “that global warming caused Katrina:”

Andrew Sullivan criticizes a post by Kos, even as he admits that Kos has a point:

Beyond showing that conservatives need to enroll in some remedial English classes, these posts and comments may be summed up as follows:

• Now is not the time to be trying to score political points; all we should be concerned about is helping the victims of this disaster;
• Liberals will take any opportunity to bash Bush;
• This was a natural disaster, not a human one. It could not have been prevented;
• We must band together as a nation in support of the disaster victims, and any attempt to discuss the ways in which Bush administration policies have exacerbated this tragedy is not only unpatriotic, but also amoral and unethical.

In some ways, the conservatives have a point: the moments in which a disaster of epic proportions is unfolding are not the moments to play partisan politics.

The problem, however, is that every one of the conservative bloggers mentioned in this post — except for Andrew Sullivan — has been playing partisan politics over the past few days.

Here are some examples:

• At 5 am on August 31, when most of the country was worrying about the victims of Hurricane Katrina, and four hours before his fellow blogger would issue a call for bloggers to stop complaining about the media and concentrate on helping people, Jay Tea wrote a post that whined about The Boston Globe’s treatment of conservative politician Mitt Romney.
• Michele Malkin ridiculed offers by the U.N. and Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez to aid victims of Katrina, noting that United Nations Undersecretary-General Jan Egeland was a “jerk” and that, regarding Chavez, “Pat Robertson was off-base, but not by much.”
• Malkin also took time out to disparage Democratic Louisiana Governor Kathleen Blanco, noting sarcastically that “Gov. Blanco finally mustered up some tough words for the thugs.”
• Glenn Reynolds, who so eloquently decried political opportunism, linked to a post which contained this charming joke:
  

  My favorite joke, “Where will you find the greatest concentration of liberal’s children? In a Planned Parenthood dumpster!”

  I guess they care ONLY when Bush can be blamed.

• Reynolds also points to this Tech Central Station post, which, in Reynolds’ words, takes those “exploiting Katrina for political purposes” to task. The author, James Glassman, sums up his argument with this sentiment:
  

  Tragedies happen, and my daughter and her family are happy just to be alive. Their losses and those of hundreds of thousands of other innocents deserve mourning, prayer and respect.

Glassman is half-right — the losses of those affected by Hurricane Katrina do deserve mourning, prayer, and respect.

But “tragedies happen” is about as facile a formulation as one could imagine. Tragedies like this do not just “happen.” There is a history — a long history — of political decisions that shaped our ability to respond to such disasters. And when the consequences of those decisions come home to roost, glib appeals to prayer and solidarity just don’t cut it.

Especially not when hypocritical conservatives criticize their opponents for politicizing a tragedy, when that’s exactly what they started doing as soon as the levees broke.

Update (9/1/05 11:50am): I just heard a man from St. Bernard Parish interviewed on Local 6 television talk about the ways in which residents saw this coming. He says that the disaster is a result of “neglect — simple neglect for poor people.” Kate explores that issue further in Surprise and Tolerance.

I’ll say again that the live streaming coverage on Local 6 is amazing. I much prefer it to the national coverage.

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