Sports Illustrated[!]: Iraqi soccer players angered by Bush campaign ads

[Dave Farber <dave () farber net>]

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 ..... Forwarded Message .......
From: "Robert J. Berger" <rberger () ibd com>
To: Dewayne Hendricks <dewayne () warpspeed com>, Dave Farber <dave () farber net>
Date: Thu, 19 Aug 2004 14:08:28 -0700
Subj: Sports Illustrated[!]: Iraqi soccer players angered by Bush campaign ads

Iraqi soccer players angered by Bush campaign ads
Posted: Thursday August 19, 2004 12:50PM; Updated: Thursday August 19, 2004
4:59PM
http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2004/olympics/2004/writers/08/19/iraq/index
.html

PATRAS, Greece -- Iraqi midfielder Salih Sadir scored a goal here on
Wednesday night, setting off a rousing celebration among the 1,500 Iraqi
soccer supporters at Pampeloponnisiako Stadium. Though Iraq -- the surprise
team of the Olympics -- would lose to Morocco 2-1, it hardly mattered as the
Iraqis won Group D with a 2-1 record and now face Australia in the
quarterfinals on Sunday.

Afterward, Sadir had a message for U.S. president George W. Bush, who is
using the Iraqi Olympic team in his latest re-election campaign
advertisements.

In those spots, the flags of Iraq and Afghanistan appear as a narrator says,
"At this Olympics there will be two more free nations -- and two fewer
terrorist regimes."

"Iraq as a team does not want Mr. Bush to use us for the presidential
campaign," Sadir told SI.com through a translator, speaking calmly and
directly. "He can find another way to advertise himself."

Ahmed Manajid, who played as a midfielder on Wednesday, had an even stronger
response when asked about Bush's TV advertisement. "How will he meet his god
having slaughtered so many men and women?" Manajid told me. "He has
committed so many crimes."

"The ad simply talks about President Bush's optimism and how democracy has
triumphed over terror," said Scott Stanzel, a spokesperson for Bush's
campaign. "Twenty-five million people in Iraq are free as a result of the
actions of the coalition."

To a man, members of the Iraqi Olympic delegation say they are glad that
former Olympic committee head Uday Hussein, who was responsible for the
serial torture of Iraqi athletes and was killed four months after the
U.S.-led coalition invaded Iraq in March 2003, is no longer in power.

But they also find it offensive that Bush is using Iraq for his own gain
when they do not support his administration's actions. "My problems are not
with the American people," says Iraqi soccer coach Adnan Hamad. "They are
with what America has done in Iraq: destroy everything. The American army
has killed so many people in Iraq. What is freedom when I go to the
[national] stadium and there are shootings on the road?"

At a speech in Beaverton, Ore., last Friday, Bush attached himself to the
Iraqi soccer team after its opening-game upset of Portugal. "The image of
the Iraqi soccer team playing in this Olympics, it's fantastic, isn't it?"
Bush said. "It wouldn't have been free if the United States had not acted."

Sadir, Wednesday's goal-scorer, used to be the star player for the
professional soccer team in Najaf. In the city in which 20,000 fans used to
fill the stadium and chant Sadir's name, U.S. and Iraqi forces have battled
loyalists to rebel cleric Moktada al-Sadr for the past two weeks. Najaf lies
in ruins.

"I want the violence and the war to go away from the city," says Sadir, 21.
"We don't wish for the presence of Americans in our country. We want them to
go away."

Manajid, 22, who nearly scored his own goal with a driven header on
Wednesday, hails from the city of Fallujah. He says coalition forces killed
Manajid's cousin, Omar Jabbar al-Aziz, who was fighting as an insurgent, and
several of his friends. In fact, Manajid says, if he were not playing soccer
he would "for sure" be fighting as part of the resistance.

"I want to defend my home. If a stranger invades America and the people
resist, does that mean they are terrorists?" Manajid says. "Everyone [in
Fallujah] has been labeled a terrorist. These are all lies. Fallujah people
are some of the best people in Iraq."

Everyone agrees that Iraq's soccer team is one of the Olympics' most
remarkable stories. If the Iraqis beat Australia on Saturday -- which is
entirely possible, given their performance so far -- they would reach the
semifinals. Three of the four semifinalists will earn medals, a prospect
that seemed unthinkable for Iraq before this tournament.

When the Games are over, though, Coach Hamad says, they will have to return
home to a place where they fear walking the streets. "The war is not
secure," says Hamad, 43. "Many people hate America now. The Americans have
lost many people around the world--and that is what is happening in America
also."

Find this article at:
 http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2004/olympics/2004/writers/08/19/iraq/inde
x.html

  
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