The International Olympic Committee, salivating at the enormous Chinese market for its corporate bankrollers, thought it was a fine idea to have the Summer Games in a nation run by an oppressive, non-democratic Communist regime.
The president of the United States, who authorized an unending war on a nation with a less egregious human-rights record, validated the Chinese leadership by choosing to attend the Beijing Olympics.
The U.S. Olympic Committee, which has contorted itself into positions even a gymnast couldn't imagine while trying to appease the host country, responded to the slaying of an extended family member with a vaguely worded statement and then hours of inexplicable and inexcusable silence.
Welcome to China, where it's none of your business whether this brutal slaying was the random act of a lunatic or merely the first act of terrorists trying to disrupt the Olympics.
According to the thoroughly unreliable Chinese government, a 47-year-old Chinese man from Hangzhou, a city in the Zhejiang Province, attacked three people who were touring the Drum Tower. An American man was stabbed to death. An American woman and the Chinese tour guide were injured. The Americans were identified as relatives of a coach with the U.S. men's volleyball team.
It took nearly 11 hours for the USOC to reveal that the victims were Todd and Barbara Bachman, parents of the wife of volleyball head coach Hugh McCutcheon. Todd Bachman died, and his wife suffered what were described as life-threatening injuries.
After the attack, the killer leaped over the railing some 130 feet above the ground. Tang Yongming was killed by the fall.
The only things we can be fairly sure are true are that the Bachmans were attacked and Todd died. Those facts are the only reasons we know anything about this incident. The Communist Party can't sweep away the thick, caustic smog, and it can't cover up the slaying of an American just 12 hours after the lighting of the Olympic torch.
