繁体中文  

华盛顿观察周刊(Washington Observer)今天让我做了一个写作考试，看我有没有能力担任他们的美国政治和外交新闻报道的记者。考试的内容是参考现有的英文报道，将中国读者可能感兴趣的美国政治话题改写为中文报道，给我的题目是布什总统给利比减刑这条新闻。我就把文章贴上来，大家帮我提提意见，看看语言方面有那些问题，尤其是存不存在翻译腔的问题，因为毕竟参考内容是英文的，有时候难免带出翻译的痕迹。另外，如果大家对内容有自己的评论，欢迎给我留言，毕竟我也对这个话题不太熟悉，如果露怯了，还请大家多多包涵！

 

布什法外开恩，“踏板车”利比获减刑

美国总统乔治·Ｗ·布什7月2日宣布，免去副总统迪克·切尼的前办公室主任刘易斯·利比30个月监禁，但仍保留判决中的25万美元罚款和两年查看期。当天，联邦上诉法庭陪审团驳回利比上诉，裁定利比不能推迟服刑。

    绰号“踏板车”的利比因在“特工门”一案涉嫌作伪证和妨碍司法，于2005年10月28日受到刑事犯罪指控，随后递交辞呈，离开白宫。今年3月，陪审团裁决认定利比妨碍司法和作伪证等4项罪名成立。6月5日，联邦地区法官沃尔顿判处利比入狱服刑30个月，刑满察看两年及罚款25万美元。由于犯罪时身为副总统办公室主任，他成为“伊朗门”事件以来被定罪的最高级白宫官员。

在推迟刑期的上诉被驳回之后，布什宣布了他的减刑决定。布什在声明中说：“我尊重陪审团的裁决，但我认为，判给利比先生的监禁过重。因此，我减掉可使利比入狱30个月的判决部分。”

值得注意的是，布什的这个减刑决定与总统特赦不同，只是减掉了利比的入狱刑期，依然保留了判决中的25万美元罚款和两年的察看期，而总统特赦则可以完全抹掉利比的犯罪记录。

利比何以获此减刑？

《时代》周刊政治分析家马克·哈尔配林（Mark Halperin）评论到：“布什简单地做了自己认为正确的事情。” 布什的此项决定旨在巩固共和党保守右派的支持，即使可能招致民主党强烈的反对，也在所不惜。

不过，政治观察家们注意到，白宫这次发布的减刑决定用词出人意料地缓和。布什希望人们知道，他在做出此项决定之前曾仔细权衡过厉害关系，慎重分析了支持减刑与反对减刑的各方意见，最终做出了他认为最合适的决定。

政治分析家们同时也指出，布什的减刑决定背后可能存在其他原因。首先，副总统切尼的影响力不可忽视。利比是切尼的心腹谋士，在伊拉克战争的策划与决策过程中起到了至关重要的作用。对利比的起诉和定罪对切尼来说是非常难堪的事，因为其心腹被控歪曲情报，对提出不同见解的官员进行打击报复，并最终被定罪为涉嫌伪证和妨碍司法，惩罚的是利比，羞辱的是切尼。切尼当然不能坐视不理，自然要动用其影响力来说服布什为利比减刑。

其次，布什已到其总统任期的最后时期，在政治上很难再有所作为。因此，与其吃力不讨好地与愤怒的民主党妥协，不如咬紧牙关一撑到底，通过为利比减刑来讨好共和党保守派，巩固其现有的党派支持。

布什的减刑决定是否受到了来自共和党内部的压力？

NewsHour资深记者格温·艾费尔（Gwen Ifill）指出：“共和党内部自然会对布什施加压力。然而，到目前为止，布什似乎在竭力抵抗着这种压力。布什希望首先穷尽所有的司法手段来为利比赢得减刑，只有在不得以的情况下才会动用其总统权力。”

由于上诉法庭陪审团在7月2日驳回了推迟执行刑期的决定，这就意味着利比不得不马上去监狱报到。面对法庭的最后判决，即使之前再三表示不干涉司法机构对白宫官员的调查，布什最终还是不得已让总统权力介入了利比的案子，通过宣布减刑来解救忠于白宫的亲信。

通过仔细研究在新闻稿中所提到的布什所做的种种利弊权衡，可以发现白宫竭尽全力希望能够在法律的框架内为布什找到给利比减刑的合法性，即使不能帮利比逃过罚款这一关，至少可以让他免除牢狱之灾。

总之，布什已经难逃跛脚鸭总统的命运，加之任期即将结束，大部分共和党和亲近白宫的小圈子都支持总统特赦利比，即使减刑决定将招致民主党对布什政府更为严厉的批评，也不会对布什造成太大的实质性政治伤害。况且，忠诚是布什集团最为看重的品质，利比在保全白宫的过程中牺牲了自己，布什自然要回报利比，并以此博取共和党内部的好感和支持，何乐而不为呢？

共和党鼓掌欢迎，民主党大加鞭挞

“共和党右派非常支持总统的减刑决定，” 马克·哈尔配林评论到。“共和党内部将布什对利比案的处理作为对总统的一次考验，看看布什是否还忠于共和党右派的核心价值观。”在此之前，共和党内部很多人对布什在移民和政府开支问题上做出的妥协所不满，这次看到布什能够鼓起勇气保卫其亲信，右派表示很满意，并对布什的决定大加赞扬。

“民主党自然被这项决定气得跳脚。”哈尔配林指出：“对左派来说，这个减刑决定被视为布什将自己小集团的利益置于法律之上的又一表现。”

在“特工门”一案中，共和党和民主党互相攻击对方存在报复行径。共和党一方指责特别检察官滥用权力，本职工作应是调查普莱姆身份泄密一案，但由于证据不足，就转而起诉利比说谎，僭越了法律赋予特别检察官的特权，超越了其调查权限，是对白宫官员的报复行为。

然而，民主党则坚持认为，白宫官员有意泄漏普莱姆身份，导致普莱姆不得不放弃在CIA的工作，并对其个人和家庭造成了永久伤害，这是布什政府对公开反对其伊拉克战争政策官员的可耻报复行径。特别检察官在调查的过程中遭到了白宫官员的种种阻挠，对利比妨碍司法和作伪证的指控与泄密行为紧密相连，没有超越特别检察官的职责权限。

“特工门”丑闻始于2003年7月。当时美国中央情报局(CIA)前特工瓦莱丽·普莱姆的丈夫、美国前外交官约瑟夫·威尔逊在报纸上发表文章，公开指责布什政府为获得公众支持发动伊拉克战争故意使用虚假情报。不久，普莱姆的特工身份即遭到本国媒体曝光，切尼的办公室主任利比成为泄密的主要嫌疑人。 

布什自身难保，无力替大选操心

布什近期在政治上遭受了接连不断的打击。伊拉克战争政策日益失去共和党内部的支持，更不用说民主党对其政策的不断批评和鞭挞；修改移民法的提议同时遭受到来自两党的抵制，迟迟不能在两院得到通过，国内也是民怨鼎沸。可以说，直至到任期结束，布什在政治上已经很难再有所作为。

“布什现在基本没有考虑其决定对共和党总统候选人可能造成的影响，他仅仅简单地做了自己认为正确的事情。” 格温·艾费尔这样评论到。

实际上，如果布什愿意的话，他完全可以将利比特赦，连25万美元的罚款都可以一同免掉。而且，彻底解决利比案也可帮助共和党总统候选人摆脱麻烦，不用再为如何回应是否同意特赦利比而发愁。然而，布什仅仅做出了减刑决定，仍然保留了对利比的25万罚款和两年察看期，他有其自己的原因。

2001年1月，当布什刚刚入主白宫的时候，在回答记者关于克林顿对马克·里克(Marc Rich)的特赦令的问题时，曾公开表示“虽然总统有特赦的权力，但是我不赞同克林顿的特赦决定，我自己也不会这样做。”

马克·里克是一位在逃的亿万富翁，从事日用品交易，是世界是最为富有的人之一。他于1983年逃到了瑞士，原因是有人指控他进行欺诈勒索和偷税漏税，并违反美国的禁运政策私下里与伊朗进行交易。给他的特赦令是克林顿离开白宫时签署的最后几项文件之一。

这次，轮到布什自己面临是否应当特赦利比这个问题的时候，作为一个标榜坚持原则的总统，布什不能自己打自己的嘴巴，收回对克林顿特赦令的批评，转而特赦自己的亲信。

因此，政治评论家们认为，布什面临一个尴尬的局面，既要保护忠于自己的亲信，讨共和党右派的欢心，同时还要保全自己的脸面，避免在特赦的问题上被人抓住小辫子，成了出尔反尔的伪君子。所以，为利比减刑成为一个妥协后的决定，一个折中的方案。

格温·艾费尔说：“至于对共和党其他候选人会造成什么样的影响，那就让他们自己去解决吧，布什已经没有能力管这么多了。”

实际上，给利比减刑也不会对两党竞选产生什么实质性的影响。共和党候选人仍然会支持布什的减刑决定，自然很高兴自己不用去接这个烫手的山芋；民主党候选人也会一如既往地批评布什政府的伊战政策，鞭挞政府高官滥用权力包庇罪犯。对利比的减刑决定没有影响对峙两方的基本立场和辩论论据，因此对大选的影响也不会很大。

况且，“特工门”丑闻与布什政府的伊战政策存在错综复杂的关系，美国一般老百姓也很难完全理解对峙两方互相攻击的要点，与其费劲弄清究竟是谁报复了谁，不如转而关心那些更容易回答的问题，例如候选人是否支持堕胎和同性恋。

 

 

 

这篇文章老板也花了根多心思来写。我也采访了杨朝晖老师，他实在很有意思，现在还能想起来上他的课听他侃小道消息的样子。我们采访的另一位知情人也是一个说话很豪爽的人，在咖啡馆里他就特大声地说那些领导人的名字，特激动地给我们讲内幕故事，旁边坐着的人也都不说话了，都偷偷地听他说什么。我倒是紧张得要死，害怕中间有个什么安全部的人过几天以危害国家安全罪也把我抓走了～其实，我觉得他讲的故事也没那么敏感，稍微有点上层关系的人可能都直到，只是像我这样的书呆子和我老板那种不懂中文的老外才觉得特新鲜。不过，总的来说，老板的故事写得很好，他选用的一些字和说法也很经典，很拽的感觉。什么时候我能修炼到自己想起来用那些字的时候就到家了～

 

Click here to read this story online:
http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/0419/p01s02-woap.html

Headline:  China's Hu: well liked, little known
Byline:  Robert Marquand Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor
Date: 04/19/2006

(BEIJING)Feted by Bill Gates, anticipating a 21-gun salute at the White House,
spending $15 billion on US aircraft, software, farm and other goods,
China's president Hu Jintao intends to show Americans this week that
the world's fastest-rising power is not a threat. Mr. Hu is giving
three speeches in four days, "more talking than he has done to the
Chinese people all year," as a Western diplomatic source here puts it.

At home, Hu, the youngest man ever to enter China's inner circle and
likely to be top leader until at least 2012, is well liked among the
masses for the humility and genial persona he projects. But he is still
not well known, even in elite Beijing circles. His status, habits,
life, and advisers remain a mystery.

"He doesn't truly believe in Marxism, or open markets," says one
Communist Party member who asked to remain anonymous. "He doesn't buy
international revolution, or Western-style democracy. We know what he
doesn't believe. We just aren't sure what he does believe. Even Chinese
can't read his face very clearly."

Hu's views are not known on the most important debate in China today:
balancing a "rightist" element that wants speedier reforms in openness,
banking, and private property - potentially widening the wealth gap -
with a "left" that wants less reform and foreign influence, and to
redistribute wealth and lower the social strain among peasants. Hu has
encouraged both sides.

Yet in this sense, Hu reflects present-day China: As leader, he has not
yet found a clear pathway, sources say. His country is at a major
juncture of greater expectation, but with no clear direction or
footing, socially or politically. Hu is not a zealous ideologue, a
visionary economist, nor is he ready to force a war over Taiwan. He is
cautious, lawyerly, a survivor, say numerous scholars, diplomats, and
party sources. To Chinese, he is as much a mystery as he is to the
foreign community in Beijing. Whether he has yet consolidated power in
China's secretive leadership enclave is still speculated about.

"He is difficult to quantify," says Russell Leigh Moses, at People's
University in Beijing. "He hasn't cut off the argument between right
and left, which leaves a lot of frustration out there."

Relations between Hu and the "Shanghai faction" of former leader Jiang
Zemin, a set of "best and brightest" players, are unclear. Hu has made
crucial appointments in the provinces, and runs three of the five
internal foreign policy advisory groups. Yet Hu, whose leadership posts
were in rural areas like Gansu, Guizhou, and Tibet, takes potshots from
the corporate talent that stoked China's dazzling east coast commercial
boom.

Hu, from a tea-selling family in Anhui, is a product of Mao's
revolutionary youth brigades of the 1950s and '60s. His formative
experience was in the brutal and extreme Cultural Revolution. As a
student in the water-conservancy program at Tsinghua University in
Beijing, and member of the Communist Youth League, he trained fellow
students in ideology. This mind-set left a powerful imprint. Recently,
in Moscow, he said he loved Russia's great literature. Asked which
works, he recalled a mid-'50s Soviet tract about the proper behavior of
teenage Soviet "young pioneers."

Yet Hu's common touch makes him popular among ordinary Chinese. Many
feel a nostalgia for the simple security of the Mao era. At a time of
grumbling over high healthcare costs, Hu's "people's first" policy and
"harmonious society" are seen as sincere. Unlike Mr. Jiang, an urbanite
who played show tunes on the piano for foreign dignitaries, and loved
opera (Jiang's $425 million French-designed opera house project opens
next year), Hu seems stiff, earnest, youthful. If Jiang likes Italian
opera, Hu is a local Beijing opera guy.

Hu's rise to power was positively meteoric. He was noticed by paramount
leader Deng Xiaoping in 1988. Deng was watching a video of the put-down
of a popular uprising in Tibet, and asked about the young man giving
orders to soldiers. Shortly after, Deng reportedly said, "Hu is good."

By 1992, Deng vaulted the 49-year-old out of Tibet and into the
innermost sanctum, the Standing Committee, an extraordinary leap in the
step-by-step system. At the 14th Party Congress that year, Deng brought
Hu in, since "Deng worried that if he waited too long, Hu may not be
able to withstand the internal struggle," says a senior party member.
"In Chinese politics, a lot of things happen behind the scenes."

The period was profoundly colored by the 1989 Tiananmen massacre, and
this offers clues to Hu's caution, experts say. Hu was close to beloved
leader Hu Yaobang, whose death that April helped spark the protest that
ended with the deaths of hundreds of young democracy idealists starting
on the evening of June 3, and leaving a scar on the nation. Hu Jintao
had been close to Hu Yaobang. But during the earlier student protests
of 1986, Hu Yaobang was purged for being too mild. (Senior leader Wan
Zhen advised breaking up the protests with flamethrowers.) Hu Jintao
was forced to denounce the elder Hu - or be cast out himself.

Hu's entry onto the ruling stage then was difficult. "After June 4, Hu
had to stay away from any clear positions or stand. He was already
cautious, and he became more so," says the senior party member. "And he
had to wait a long, long time under Jiang." (Last summer's
rehabilitation of Hu Yaobang was approved by Hu Jintao, sources say. Hu
reportedly wept on a visit to Hu's tomb, reports of which circled
widely in Internet gossip groups.)

"Hu is a new type of Chinese leader," says Yang Zhaohui at Beijing
University. "His legitimacy doesn't come from the patriotic war or
significant party achievement ... but is being established by winning
support from the people themselves."

Currently, China's social atmosphere is in a period of scattered
darkness and light. Ever more construction and international trade are
under way, and communication technology continues to open up; but the
centers of authority are less clear. The government is pythonlike in
its constriction of free speech, with dozens of journalists in prison.
And, as Hu told Bush when they met for the fourth time in September,
Chinese leaders are worried about growing instability and protests in
the countryside.

In the US - despite an agenda of prickly topics like rising trade
deficits; Taiwan, Iran, and North Korea; energy competition; troubled
Japan ties; and counterfeiting - what Beijing most desires is a visit
where Hu comes across as a sincere and trustworthy interlocutor.

Yet last year, a Pentagon report pointed to heavy expenditures aimed at
weapon systems whose only use is against the US military. But China's
proclaimed budget falls far short of nearly all independent estimates.
China image strategists earlier coined the phrase "peaceful rise" to
describe the country's rapid growth in Asia. Yet as one US official
puts it, "Until we hear a better explanation of why China is developing
certain strengths, we aren't yet using the phrase 'peaceful' with
'rise.' "

Hu has attempted to diversify his foreign policy away from the
US-centered policy of predecessor Jiang. By placing energy needs
squarely into foreign policy, China has opened ties with states like
Venezuela, Iran, Canada, and Australia. Yet it is too early to tell how
well China's policy is developing in southeast Asia and Latin America.
Attempts early in the Hu era to solidify ties with the European Union
(EU) as a counterweight to the US have been rebuffed by the EU. Hu's
current trip shows a great refocusing on US-China ties, as a key to
China's desires to reunify with Taiwan and to keep matters friendly
with China's best customer, with which it holds a $202 billion trade
gap.

Anger in Congress over China's artificial exchange rate and currency
evaluation, however, will probably not spur more than the small
adjustments China has already made. Powerful state banking interests
are opposed to reevaluation; one US diplomat say the banks worry they
can't compete.

As China prepares for the 2008 Olympic games, Hu is expected to get his
main team in place, and begin to address how a one-party system might
adjust to global complexities. "We won't see Hu's real face until
2007," when the next party congress occurs, says a party source. "By
that time, we will need to see him."

Hu tours America

April 18: Visit with Bill Gates at Microsoft headquarters in Redmond,
Wash. Dinner for 100 at Gates home.

April 19: Tour of Boeing's Everett, Wash., factory. Tentative agreement
reached this week to buy 80 planes for $5.2 billion.

April 20: Bush greets Hu on White House South Lawn with 21-gun salute
and review of honor guard. Meetings later with the vice-president,
members of Congress, and others.

April 21: Hu visits Yale University.

Sources: White House, wire services.

(c) Copyright 2006 The Christian Science Monitor.  All rights reserved.