Unwilling participants
Iraqi soccer players angered by Bush campaign ads featuring team
Posted: Thursday August 19, 2004 12:50PM; Updated: Thursday August 19, 2004 1:28PM



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."

"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 Bush campaign was contacted about the Iraqi soccer player's statements, but has yet to respond.

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 their team for his own gain when they do not support his administration's actions in Iraq. "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."

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Truth is by nature self-evident, as soon as you remove the cobwebs of ignorance that surround it, it shines clear. Gandhi

Yeah id be pissed off too if Bush tried to use my team like that.....what an @$$.

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he would rather have uday (spelling) tourture his arse instead. Oh, thats right we took care of him. Also, was this the same soccer team that was on TV saying how they were tortured and saying thank you to America?

Just out of curiosity,

What do you think about the fact that these Soccer Players don't want the United States in Iraq anymore? That they want to fight their own battles?

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Truth is by nature self-evident, as soon as you remove the cobwebs of ignorance that surround it, it shines clear. Gandhi

In 1991 or recently?

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Truth is by nature self-evident, as soon as you remove the cobwebs of ignorance that surround it, it shines clear. Gandhi

thats so easy to say now that we have removed all the guys doing the torturing and killing. I am all for leaving there ungrateful arses hi and dry.

Yeah - I am sure they are very ungrateful for the 11 000+ (possibly 37 000+ Iraqi civilans that have been killed in this war)....

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Truth is by nature self-evident, as soon as you remove the cobwebs of ignorance that surround it, it shines clear. Gandhi

own people!! every day they drop another mortar on there own people and just think its OK. THEY DON"T CARE WHO THEY KILL!! As long as there religious fanatic leader gets his way.

Which WAR are you talking about?? Since the US invaded Iraq in 2003
- 11 000+ have died as a result of military action BY THE UNITED STATES!!!

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Truth is by nature self-evident, as soon as you remove the cobwebs of ignorance that surround it, it shines clear. Gandhi

I heard the sign outside Abu Ghraib simply said "Under New Management"....

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The last time this country mixed politics with religion, people got burned at the stake.