asheris

Last Thursday, Sports Illustrated's Grant Wahl included the following article in his Olympic coverage: Unwilling participants: Iraqi soccer players angered by Bush campaign ads.

Excerpt:

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?"

How "free" are they, when they're now little more than ad fodder for Bush? The Bush campaign didn't even have the courtesy to alert the Iraqi team before the ads started airing, much less ask if they'd mind being featured in a campaign ad. (Any other kind of ad, they'd probably get paid, too.)