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Iraqi Soccer Players Not Too Happy with Bush's Ads
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| MisterOpus1 |
Perhaps Bush should have cleared this one with the soccer players first?:
| quote: | Unwilling Participants
Iraqi soccer players angered by Bush campaign ads
Posted: Thursday August 19, 2004 12:50PM; Updated: Monday August 23, 2004 11:03AM
Salih Sadir, left, has celebrated two goals for the surprising Iraqis in Greece, but will find his return home quite sobering.
Nick Laham/Getty Images
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."
(To see the ad, click here.)
"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.
http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/20...iraq/index.html |
I seriously doubt Bush really gives a what these Iraqi players think.
To our credit, however, I will say that it is a good thing that the Iraq is even in the Olympics participating without the threat of torture and/or death by Saddam's insane son. |
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| Shakka |
| Damned if you do, damned if you don't. I guess they really like their new found freedom of speech! Threaten to take it back again and I bet they'd change their tune pretty quickly! I'm glad they're doing well--they probably compete better without having to worry about their children being killed if they lose. |
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| BadBadNeil |
| I don't want Bush to use them for any political purposes but I can't quite figure out how they can complain about their situation. Perhaps they'd like to go back to being tortured again...some people are just ungrateful. Sure we didn't go to Iraq to liberate the Iraqi olympic athletes, but it WAS a direct effect of our actions in Iraq. |
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| Yoepus |
Way to go!
Here's another one for the liberals making an issue out of nothing. |
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| Q5echo |
| quote: | Originally posted by MisterOpus1
I seriously doubt Bush really gives a what these Iraqi players think.
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they're a very proud people. guaranteed Bush knows that |
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| tranceaholic |
| quote: | Originally posted by Shakka
without having to worry about their children being killed if they lose. |
they dont have to worry about thier children gettin killed if they lose but they still have to worry about thier children gettin killed period..there is still a war goin on u know |
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| Shakka |
| quote: | Originally posted by tranceaholic
they dont have to worry about thier children gettin killed if they lose but they still have to worry about thier children gettin killed period..there is still a war goin on u know |
This is true.;) |
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| NYGblue |
| quote: | Originally posted by BadBadNeil
I don't want Bush to use them for any political purposes but I can't quite figure out how they can complain about their situation. Perhaps they'd like to go back to being tortured again...some people are just ungrateful. Sure we didn't go to Iraq to liberate the Iraqi olympic athletes, but it WAS a direct effect of our actions in Iraq. |
Well since it was THEM and not YOU under the threat of torture maybe they have a certain perspective being Iraqi that you or I can't see being norteamericanos.
I love that bull "they are ungrateful" cop out response coming from the west side of the atlantic. Like you really have a ing clue. Patrimony doesn't win friends, remember that. |
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| Cyrus King |
| The more Bush bashing... the better.. GO IRAQIS!!!!! |
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| BadBadNeil |
| quote: | Originally posted by NYGblue
Well since it was THEM and not YOU under the threat of torture maybe they have a certain perspective being Iraqi that you or I can't see being norteamericanos.
I love that bull "they are ungrateful" cop out response coming from the west side of the atlantic. Like you really have a ing clue. Patrimony doesn't win friends, remember that. |
If they want Uday back to torture them I wish i could help them out. |
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| arctic |
| quote: | Originally posted by BadBadNeil
If they want Uday back to torture them I wish i could help them out. |
It's perfectly possible for them to be unhappy with the US and not like Saddam or his family either. Simply because the US eventually decided that Saddam Hussein was a bad guy doesn't make everything that the US does in Iraq acceptable.
Honestly, is it all that surprising that a lot of Iraqis are going to hate Westerners (I'm including my own country in this) and Americans? First we have the UN sanctions instigated the US (and again supported by my own country, amongst others), which apparently killed 500,000 people -- and may well have kept Saddam in power. Then there's the uprising where we happily told Iraqi rebels that we'd support them, but stood by as Saddam used the weaponry we'd given him to quell it. We also have the US support for Saddam when he began his regime.
Ad that to the recent invasion (which most Iraqis oppose, they're happy to be rid of Saddam, but they certainly don't want about America either) -- which has killed tens of thousands of people. The current regime is censoring newspapers and the only truly independent TV channel in the Middle East, and enacting a number of other draconian laws. In other words, they're behaving like an authoritarian dictatorship rather than a relatively open and free government. |
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| BadBadNeil |
Oh they have the right to be pissed at US troops for being in their country, hell I wouldn't want some other troops here either. Same with Bush, i know the majority even carry hatred from Bush sr. But that they can not connect the fact that Uday and the torture is gone only because the U.S killed him is beyond me.
this was response to your first part, you were typing more as i was typing |
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