Piqued at the annual critique by the U.S. State Department, China has turned the tables and prepared its own assessment of America's human rights record for the last year. Its first line:
In 2004 the atrocity of US troops abusing Iraqi POWs exposed the dark side of human rights performance of the United States.
While the idea of China criticizing the U.S. might seem risible (and indeed this is the WSJ's take on it), the Bush Administration's cavalier attitude towards prisoner rights made it possible. (The Wall St Journal, of course, ignores the Iraqi prisoner abuse entirely in its assessment of the Chinese report.)