Oh. My. God.

The reporters report:

With four days left before the start of the 2008 Summer Games, Chinese officials have not lived up to key promises they made to win the right to host the Olympics, including widening press freedoms, cleaning up their capital city's polluted air and respecting human rights.

The failures were evident Monday:

• A thick pall of smog covered Beijing, raising concerns that endurance events such as long-distance races would have to be moved out of the city. Some still held out hope that emergency measures would clear the city's air by Friday.
• Near Tiananmen Square in the heart of the city, police scuffled with protesters who said they were evicted from their homes to make way for Games-related development.
• Chinese censors continued to block access to politically sensitive Web sites for thousands of foreign journalists gathered at the Olympic press center.

These failures stand in contrast to the Herculean efforts China has made to prepare for the Olympics, building world-class venues, housing and other infrastructure.

Eager to impress a world audience, Chinese organizers have spent an estimated $40 billion on the 18-day event and built breathtaking facilities such as the landmark National Stadium, known as the Bird's Nest, where the opening ceremonies will be held Friday.

However, before and after 2001, when China won the right to host the Summer Games, Chinese Olympic officials repeatedly said they'd use the Games to improve the country's human rights record and allow reporters unfettered access to cover the competitions.

"We will give the media complete freedom to report when they come to China," Wang Wei, the secretary general of the Beijing Olympic Bid Committee, told a press conference in 2001. "We are confident that the games coming to China not only promote our economy, but also enhance all social conditions, including education, health and human rights."

When they applied to host the games, Beijing officials also had completed a Candidature File, in which they agreed to meet specific requirements. Although the International Olympic Committee said the file is a public document, Beijing Olympics officials didn't follow through Monday on a request by McClatchy to see the Candidature File they completed.

Reached by phone, the Beijing Olympic organizing committee's head of media operations, Sun Weijia, declined to comment.

A model file found on the International Olympic Committee Web site, however, requires host cities to provide athletes with a healthy physical environment, to give the news media open access and to honor the International Olympic Committee's charter, among other measures.

One of the charter's six fundamental principles states, "Any discrimination with regard to a country or a person on grounds of race, religion, politics, gender or otherwise is incompatible with belonging to the Olympic Movement."

Critics, including top U.S. officials, said Chinese officials have violated those agreements by tightening repression of political dissent in advance of the Games and not allowing reporters covering the Olympics full access.

Some critics look back and say that it was easy to believe most of the official statements.

"The argument certainly appeared plausible, if not compelling," recalled Rep. Christopher Smith, a New Jersey Republican, who visited Beijing last month. "But in the years, now months, run-up to the Olympics, the reality has been numbingly disappointing."

A recent report by the human rights advocacy group Amnesty International found that Chinese officials have stepped up their persecution of followers of the outlawed Falun Gong spiritual movement, and detained rural petitioners seeking redress on a range of political issues.

"I suppose it was just a bunch of words when they made those promises," said Sophie Richardson, the Asia advocacy director for the U.S.-based watchdog group Human Rights Watch.

Oh my God, I am shocked. Shocked and horrified. Never in my wildest dreams did I believe this could possibly happen.