A bronze to remember?
It's not likely Iraq's soccer team will beat Italy in Friday's bronze-medal game. Then again, reaching this point is pretty incredible in itself seeing as how the country has won a total of ONE Olympic medal in its history.
A nod to NBC for letting us watch almost in its entirety Saturday's 1-0 Iraq win over Australia on one of its affiliate networks. A good story actually took precedence over U.S. water polo coverage.
It's nice to know that even if the Iraqis fail against the Italians, they won't be returning home for torture at the hands of the now-deceased Uday Hussein. Many of the national team's players don't seem to appreciate this fact, but it's hard to root against them in any event.
Comments (2)
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"Many of the national team's players don't seem to appreciate this fact."
Meaning...what?
That their lack of enthusiasm for becoming campaign tools for W equals indifference to the removal of the bad old regime?
Posted on August 26, 2004 8:55 PM
Campaign tools? OK, promoting the new-found freedoms in Afghanistan and Iraq in campaign ads is questionable self-promotion, though if you want shameless political advertising -- or shameless self-promotion -- you can't point solely to one party, as you seem to be doing.
My point was, without trying to harp on it: Not were they indifferent? But were those players saying they preferred Uday's guidance of Iraq's national athletics program over the current situation? If so, that's troubling. Then again, we're talking only two or three soccer players and one coach here. Not exactly a fair sample of Iraqi opinion.
Posted on September 2, 2004 4:05 PM