Unwilling participants
Iraqi soccer players angered by Bush campaign ads
Posted: Thursday August 19, 2004 12:50PM; Updated: Thursday August 19, 2004 5:03PM

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 now.


Special Kudos To Alex for pointing me to this site.
Bush just seems to politicize anything to get re-elected. 9/11 wasn't supposed to be politicized, yet Bush started using it first in his ads. He is definitely the worst president of my lifetime. He may be one of if not the worst ever. He has seemed to succeed only in dividing everything into black and white, when the world is grey. Nothing besides getting laid would make me happier than seeing this evildoer booted from the White House. Since Bush isn't getting blamed for shitty security, horrible intelligence, and the 9/11 attack (PUT YOUR HEAD DOWN ON THE DESK, PUT YOUR BIG HEAD DOWN ON THE DESK!) then what does he have to do with security. How does HE make it safer...if he wasn't making it safer then, and gets no blame, then how can he says he is a safer president...you failed jackass! The greatest attack on the American homeland happened while you sat in a classroom and read a friggin book. "I didn't want to scare the children"...Well the children of NYC and Washington DC were scared that day. Just simply say "I gotta go". You're the President during a national crisis...you could have prevented one of the towers getting hit and the Pentagon, if you had acted quickly. Instead you faltered, just like your presidency has been one big falter after another. The Chinese spy plane, the Kyoto accords, september 11th, Patriot Act, intelligence failures, postwar Iraq...I'm sure I could name more, but I don't want to take up my entire blog page! The CEO of a corporation is responsible for the entire corporation, and I know that it's not possible for the President to know everything, but my god...you'd have to be Stevie Wonder not to see some of the things that have happened since then. I realize that by even typing this I probably made Ashcroft's list, but you know what, I don't care. I'm done being angry now. God Bless America