Stalin used to do the same sort of thing. 60 years on it looks even more ludicrous than it did then.

Perhaps you are rejecting it because of that whole pot calling the kettle thing.

Maybe you're rejecting it because the bases of the argument are all very selectively chosen?

Maybe you accept the US govt report because you like the arguments they have selectively chosen

Maybe you are rejecting it because it contains howlers like this [page 16]:

William J. Bennett, former U.S. Secretary of Education,once said that the only way to lower the crime rate in America was for all black women to have abortion.

Well, with all that illegal surveillance going on, at least the US government will be very well-informed about other countries' abuses.
Not to mention hypothetical exchanges like:
"We believe that political prisoners are regularly tortured in Syria."
"How do you know?"
"We send them there."

A phrase like "aroused keen concern of public opinion" is a dead giveaway that this report had to have been written by someone with a Communist Party background.

What is it about written English from international sources that makes it so obvious that it's not from a native speaker? "The unchecked spread of guns has caused incessant murders." Weird.

Additionally, how much do you want to bet that much of the language is lifted directly from the reports...

As grandma used to say...

"Consider the source."

Come to think of it, grandma, with a sixth grade education, had a lot more common sense than most politicians I know.

They're wrong on income, but they weren't just making S*** up. 10% is the correct figure for wealth -- i.e., the median net worth of an African American family is 1/10 that of the median white family. That's been true for at least the last 20 years.

They do this every year about this time when we release our report on human rights in China. It's usually pretty comic, though I suppose you could translate our pravda and it would sound just as dumb.

We should welcome the opportunity to have our faults exposed as they should as well however justified or not.

The Chinese are as adept as native phone surveillance opponents in the art of selective journalism. The phrase "domestic phone calls" masks the true nature of the calls in question - that they had been made to suspected terrorists overseas. Woudln't "half-domestic" be more accurate?

I like "intermestic." In part because this would be the first time it appears outside a political science textbook.

However -- and here's the disturbing question -- if the U.S. engages in these practices as well, then what is the external validity of its own human rights report?

Perhaps to provide a basis for showing that when we do render someone to countries like Syria, Morocco, Egypt or Algeria in violation of the Convention Against Torture, that there is, in fact, a basis for believing that these people will be tortured.