This is a welcome surprise.

In a case widely seen as testing the limits of press freedom in China, a court has slashed the prison sentences of two senior newspaper executives who were convicted on embezzlement and bribery charges, the Xinhua news agency said yesterday.

The Intermediate Court in Guangzhou cut former Southern Metropolitan Daily general manager Yu Huafeng’s 12-year term to eight years, Xinhua said.

Former editor-in-chief Li Minying’s sentence was reduced from 11 to six years.

It’s certainly a good thing, although the article doesn’t give much insight into why the court did this. Next, I’m hoping we here something about the fate of the paper’s editor Cheng Yizhong, waiting in jail with no information on what he’s being charged with.

Anyone who believes Abu Ghraib was overblown by the media, that it can be swept away by courtmartialing six or seven kid soldiers, that the Nick Berg decapitation should have been a bigger story, that the worst is over or that America is seen in the same light as it was before is only fooling him/herself.

According to the fiercely intelligent (and often infuriating) Christopher Hitchens, this “moral Chernobyl” is about to come catapulting back in a way most of us aren’t prepared for. It seems like a hundred years ago that Rumsfeld leaked to the world that there were “more pictures” and videos, already seen by members of Congress, and Hitchens has it on good authority the cat’s about to come leaping out of the bag.

It is going to get much worse. The graphic videos and photographs that have so far been shown only to Congress are, I have been persuaded by someone who has seen them, not likely to remain secret for very long. And, if you wonder why formerly gung-ho rightist congressmen like James Inhofe (“I’m outraged more by the outrage”) have gone so quiet, it is because they have seen the stuff and you have not. There will probably be a slight difficulty about showing these scenes in prime time, but they will emerge, never fear. We may have to start using blunt words like murder and rape to describe what we see. And one linguistic reform is in any case already much overdue. The silly word “abuse” will have to be dropped. No law or treaty forbids “abuse,” but many conventions and statutes, including our own and the ones we have urged other nations to sign, do punish torture—which is what we are talking about here at a bare minimum.

Hitchens makes a lot of sense as to why torture in any form is to be avoided at all costs, even in the case of the “ticking time bomb.”

I’m still amazed when I visit the warbloggers, and see their commenters saying that this is a dead issue, it’s under investigation and the military is demonstrating how well they have things under control. And they believe this, in the face of the memos and the obvious scapegoating and the fact that most of those we felt it was necessary to torture have since been released from Abu Ghraib — that’s how dangerous they were. That’s what a threat they posed.

For proof of just how profoundly this has affected our image, just look at the latest poll numbers from Iraq.

A poll of Iraqis commissioned by the U.S.-backed government has provided the Bush administration a stark picture of anti-American sentiment — more than half of Iraqis believe they would be safer if U.S. troops simply left.

The poll, commissioned by the Coalition Provisional Government last month but not released to the American public, also found radical cleric Muqtada al-Sadr is surging in popularity, 92 percent of Iraqis consider the United States an occupying force and more than half believe all Americans behave like those portrayed in the Abu Ghraib prison abuse photos.

The Associated Press obtained a copy of a multimedia presentation about the poll that was shown to U.S. officials involved in developing Iraq policy. Several officials said in interviews the results reinforced feelings that the transfer of power and security responsibilities to the Iraqis can’t come too soon.

“If you are sitting here as part of the coalition, it (the poll) is pretty grim,” said Donald Hamilton, a career foreign service officer who is working for Ambassador Paul Bremer’s interim government and helps oversee the CPA’s polling of Iraqis.

Abu Ghraib. It may not be a fair picture of America, it may be out of proportion, and it is certainly unfortunate in every way. But it’s our legacy. In the minds of so many, it is who America is. Nothing can ever be the same after Abu Ghraib.

Just one more thing to worry about. What can you do?

No, I’m not joking, though it sure sounds far-fetched:

Iran reportedly is readying troops to move into Iraq if U.S. troops pull out, leaving a security vacuum.

The Saudi daily Al-Sharq al-Awsat, monitored in Beirut, reports Iran has massed four battalions at the border.

Al-Sharq al-Awsat quoted “reliable Iraqi sources” as saying, “Iran moved part of its regular military forces towards the Iraqi border in the southern sector at a time its military intelligence agents were operating inside Iraqi territory.”

And that’s all we know for now. Maybe Chalabi really will end up running Iraq after we leave. Oh, what a mess.

[Via No More Mister Nice Blog.]

A wingnut web site is asking its visitors to jam the e-mailboxes of theater owners with pleas not to show Michael Moore’s subversive and anti-American movie Fahrenheit 9/11.

Let’s not allow them get anywhere with this. Let’s send our own emails to the theater owners congratulating them on the courage and good judgement they’re demonstrating by showing this important movie under such short notice. Here’s how to reach them:

brian_blatchley@loewscpx.com
michael_norris@loewscpx.com
kerry_moots@loewscpx.com
John_mccauley@loewscpx.com
john_walker@loewscpx.com
maura_Campbell@loewscpx.com

Oh, and to those of you who are convinced Fahrenheit 9/11 is a radical commie al-Qaeda-sponsored propaganda piece, be sure to read this great review — by Fox News. (You heard me right.)

The crowd that gave Michael Moore’s controversial “Fahrenheit 9/11” documentary a standing ovation last night at the Ziegfeld Theater premiere certainly didn’t have to be encouraged to show their appreciation. From liberal radio host/writer Al Franken to actor/director Tim Robbins, Moore was in his element.

But once “F9/11” gets to audiences beyond screenings, it won’t be dependent on celebrities for approbation. It turns out to be a really brilliant piece of work, and a film that members of all political parties should see without fail.

As much as some might try to marginalize this film as a screed against President George Bush, “F9/11” — as we saw last night — is a tribute to patriotism, to the American sense of duty — and at the same time a indictment of stupidity and avarice.

Readers of this column may recall that I had a lot of problems with Moore’s “Bowling for Columbine,” particularly where I thought he took gratuitous shots at helpless targets such as Charlton Heston. “Columbine” too easily succeeded by shooting fish in a barrel, as they used to say.

Can you believe it? Rage against Moore all you want — just be sure to see the movie first, so you know what you’re talking about.

UPDATE: Meanwhile, Kos say the plan to scare off the theater owners is, in the George Bush tradition, a miserable failure.

Last week, during the never-ending funeral of our 40th president, only one moment jumped out at me as remarkable, and that was Ron Reagan Jr.’s eulogy in which he took an obvious swipe at our current president.

Dad was also a deeply, unabashedly religious man. But he never made the fatal mistake of so many politicians – wearing his faith on his sleeve to gain political advantage. True, after he was shot and nearly killed early in his presidency he came to believe that God had spared him in order that he might do good. But he accepted that as a responsibility, not a mandate. And there is a profound difference.

I thought it was a wonderful moment, providing some much needed balance. In case anyone hadn’t noticed, Bush and his handlers took enormous strides last week to wrap the president in Reagan’s mantle. His campaign site was overhauled to look like an online Reagan museum. Bush, who is so quick to accuse the other side of “politicizing” issues, had no shame when it came to politicizing Reagan’s death and making it not just a theme but the very cornerstone of his campaign, at least temporarily.

As the above article says, Ron Reagan’s jab at Bush last week was not the first, and it’s clear he has little respect for the shrub who would be president. Check out this Salon article for the history of this animosity.

[Ron] Reagan took a swipe at Bush during the 2000 GOP convention in Philadelphia, which featured a tribute to his father, telling the Washington Post’s Lloyd Grove, “The big elephant sitting in the corner is that George W. Bush is simply unqualified for the job… What’s his accomplishment? That he’s no longer an obnoxious drunk?” Since then he’s been quiet about the current occupant of the White House — until now….

“Sure, he wasn’t a technocrat like Clinton. But my father was a man — that’s the difference between him and Bush. To paraphrase Jack Palance, my father crapped bigger ones than George Bush.”

Reagan says he doesn’t have anything personal against Bush. He met him only once, at a White House event during the Reagan presidency. “At least my wife insists we did — he left absolutely no impression on me. But Doria remembers him very negatively — I can’t repeat what she said about him, I’d rather not use profanity. I do remember Jeb — a big fella, seemed to be the brightest of the bunch. And of course their parents were very charming.”

But Reagan has strong feelings about Bush’s policies, including the war in Iraq, which he ardently opposes. “Nine-11 gave the Bush people carte blanche to carry out their extreme agenda — and they didn’t hesitate for a moment to use it. I mean, by 9/12 Rumsfeld was saying, ‘Let’s hit Iraq.’ They’ve used the war on terror to justify everything from tax cuts to Alaska oil drilling.”

Not that his father was a saint when it came to military adventures, tax cuts and the environment. But I have to give Reagan Junior enormous credit for having the courage and intelligence to go on the record with his opinions and to do so when the eyes of the entire world were upon him last weekend. This, combined with his mother’s obvious rancor at Bush’s irrational policy on stem cell research, should help help add some additional cracks to Bush’s crumbling foundation. Enough cracks and the whole things crashes down. So bring ’em on.

In comments to my previous post, the issue of Ashcroft’s badness is briefly discussed. Conrad commented that (paraphrase) Janet Reno is more despicable because of the deaths at Waco, but I don’t buy the comparison. Waco was an awful mistake and a tragedy, but it did not typify Reno’s performance or her concept of what being attorney general means. Ashcroft is consistently dreadful on a daily basis. And dangerous, too.

There are few members of the Bush team that I truly “hate.” Hate is a strong word and if you throw it around a lot it loses its power. I reserve it for the very worst, like Ashcroft.

There was good reason so many of us feared the appointment of a backward-thinking pentecostal to oversee the Justice Department. These fears have been justified many times over, and Paul Krugman today summarizes them in a column that’s sure to raise lots of eyebrows. It’s brilliant, and I urge you to read the entire thing.

Travesty of Justice
By PAUL KRUGMAN

No question: John Ashcroft is the worst attorney general in history.

For this column, let’s just focus on Mr. Ashcroft’s role in the fight against terror. Before 9/11 he was aggressively uninterested in the terrorist threat. He didn’t even mention counterterrorism in a May 2001 memo outlining strategic priorities for the Justice Department. When the 9/11 commission asked him why, he responded by blaming the Clinton administration, with a personal attack on one of the commission members thrown in for good measure.

We can’t tell directly whether Mr. Ashcroft’s post-9/11 policies are protecting the United States from terrorist attacks. But a number of pieces of evidence suggest otherwise.

First, there’s the absence of any major successful prosecutions. The one set of convictions that seemed fairly significant — that of the “Detroit 3” — appears to be collapsing over accusations of prosecutorial misconduct. (The lead prosecutor has filed a whistle-blower suit against Mr. Ashcroft, accusing him of botching the case. The Justice Department, in turn, has opened investigations against the prosecutor. Payback? I report; you decide.)

Then there is the lack of any major captures. Somewhere, the anthrax terrorist is laughing. But the Justice Department, you’ll be happy to know, is trying to determine whether it can file bioterrorism charges against a Buffalo art professor whose work includes harmless bacteria in petri dishes.

Perhaps most telling is the way Mr. Ashcroft responds to criticism of his performance. His first move is always to withhold the evidence. Then he tries to change the subject by making a dramatic announcement of a terrorist threat.

For an example of how Mr. Ashcroft shuts down public examination, consider the case of Sibel Edmonds, a former F.B.I. translator who says that the agency’s language division is riddled with incompetence and corruption, and that the bureau missed critical terrorist warnings. In 2002 she gave closed-door Congressional testimony; Senator Charles Grassley described her as “very credible . . . because people within the F.B.I. have corroborated a lot of her story.”

But the Justice Department has invoked the rarely used “state secrets privilege” to prevent Ms. Edmonds from providing evidence. And last month the department retroactively classified two-year-old testimony by F.B.I. officials, which was presumably what Mr. Grassley referred to.

For an example of changing the subject, consider the origins of the Jose Padilla case. There was no publicity when Mr. Padilla was arrested in May 2002. But on June 6, 2002, Coleen Rowley gave devastating Congressional testimony about failures at the F.B.I. (which reports to Mr. Ashcroft) before 9/11. Four days later, Mr. Ashcroft held a dramatic press conference and announced that Mr. Padilla was involved in a terrifying plot. Instead of featuring Ms. Rowley, news magazine covers ended up featuring the “dirty bomber” who Mr. Ashcroft said was plotting to kill thousands with deadly radiation.

Since then Mr. Padilla has been held as an “enemy combatant” with no legal rights. But Newsweek reports that “administration officials now concede that the principal claim they have been making about Padilla ever since his detention — that he was dispatched to the United States for the specific purpose of setting off a radiological `dirty bomb’ — has turned out to be wrong and most likely can never be used in court.”

But most important is the memo. Last week Mr. Ashcroft, apparently in contempt of Congress, refused to release a memo on torture his department prepared for the White House almost two years ago. Fortunately, his stonewalling didn’t work: The Washington Post has acquired a copy of the memo and put it on its Web site.

Much of the memo is concerned with defining torture down: if the pain inflicted on a prisoner is less than the pain that accompanies “serious physical injury, such as organ failure,” it’s not torture. Anyway, the memo declares that the federal law against torture doesn’t apply to interrogations of enemy combatants “pursuant to [the president’s] commander-in-chief authority.” In other words, the president is above the law.

The memo came out late Sunday. Mr. Ashcroft called a press conference yesterday — to announce an indictment against a man accused of plotting to blow up a shopping mall in Ohio. The timing was, I’m sure, purely coincidental.

That new website the Chinese government is providing the people to rat out sites they don’t like — or sites run by people they want to get revenge on — is being carefully positioned as an anti-pornography site. In fact, parents all throughout the Mainland are breathing a sigh of relief, knowing their children will go to bed a little bit safer, a little more protected against the dangers of dirty pictures, thanks to the Great Cyber Nanny and her new scare-you-to-death informer site.

People, especially parents, generally applauded the opening of the website.

“It’s good for fostering a healthy environment for the growth of our kids,” said a netizen.

(Great journalism, too.)

Of course, we all know better. This is the kind of informer system that would make Chairman Mao or Comrade Beria or Secretary Ashcroft or Heinrich Himmler proud. It’s a huge step backward for freedom of expression in China, making just about anyone prone to accusations of posting “unhealthy” material. Whatever that is.

This is the actual ad for Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 9/11, opening in just a few days.

I think they’re kind of cute together.

Had this occurred under Clinton, all hell would have broken loose.

As the government prepared for war in Iraq in the fall of 2002, a senior political appointee in the Defense Department chose oil services giant Halliburton Co. to secretly plan how to repair Iraqi oil fields, and then briefed Vice President Cheney’s chief of staff and other White House officials about the sole-source contract before it was granted.

Rep. Henry A. Waxman (D-Calif.) said the new details about the $1.8 million contract, disclosed last week in a Pentagon briefing for congressional staff members, raise new questions about whether the vice president or his office played any role in decisions to give what became billions of dollars worth of government business to Halliburton, where Cheney was chief executive from 1995 to 2000.

Cheney has said neither he nor his office influenced decisions to give contracts to Halliburton.

In a letter to Cheney yesterday, Waxman said the circumstances “appear to contradict your assertions that you were not informed about the Halliburton contracts.”

“They also seem to contradict the Administration’s repeated assertions that political appointees were not involved in the award of contracts to Halliburton,” wrote Waxman, senior Democrat on the House Government Reform Committee and one of the sharpest critics of the government’s ties to Halliburton.

Kevin Kellems, a spokesman for Cheney, played down the importance of Waxman’s letter, suggesting it was politically motivated. “We stand by our previous statements,” Kellems said.

No outrage? No special prosecutor? No calls for our secretive VP to step down from his ivory tower and give us a more complete explanation? No, of course not; we’re at war. He can do as he chooses.