Women's beach volleyball is the greatest Olympic event ever. The athletes don't have breasts, but damn they are fit.
Okay, it is Olympics time and the feel good story of the games has been the Iraqi soccer team. Once tortured by the bastard Uday Hussein for poor performances, now the team is competing in Athens and performing quite well. They won their group, upsetting Portugal in the first round and defeated Australia to reach the semifinal round. You can't help but feel good about this story until you read the comments of some of the players. The Bush campaign was running a television spot that featured the following text: "At this Olympics there will be two more free nations -- and two fewer terrorist regimes" along with the flags of Afghanistan and Iraq. The ad can be seen on the campaign website. Nothing terribly controversial I would think. Now the comments from some of the oh so grateful Iraqi players. Salih Sadir said "Iraq as a team does not want Mr. Bush to use us for the presidential campaign. He can find another way to advertise himself." Using the Iraq Olympic team? What? Read the text from the ad again. Where are they being used. It is the truth that there are two more free nations competing. It's just that one of them doesn't seem very appreciative. Ahmed Manajid was a little harsher saying "How will he meet his god (Bush) having slaughtered so many men and women? He has committed so many crimes." One thing you should know about Mr. Manajid is that he is from Fallujah where his cousin and many friends have died fighting against freedom and he says that if he was not playing soccer he would be fighting with Moktada al-Sadr. Well isn't that nice? Let me close with the comments of the coach Adnan Hamad. "My problems are not with the American people," he says. "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 stadium and there are shootings on the road?" Yep, that's why we are there. Not to liberate the freaking country and probably saving his life from the bloodthirsty Uday if his team does not win. Nope, we're there simply to kill Iraqis for sport. Never mind the hundreds of Americans and other coalition partners, including from tonight's opponent Australia, who have died in the effort. I guess I shouldn't be so unkind. The success of the team does boost the morale of the average Iraqi citizen. And I don't know that the entire team feels the way that these three pricks do. But I do hope they go home without a medal. And I do hope that Ahmed Manajid does go home to Fallujah and dies in the street at the hands of the military forces of the newly freed Iraq. (Update: They went home without a medal. Yea!)
And another thing...
Another thing happened at the Olympics that just got under my skin. Maybe this isn't the first year that it has been the case, but it's the first that I've noticed. I was watching a little of the opening ceremony. It was the only part the I can stand to watch, the procession of athletes. The rest of the show is a lot of artsy crap. Anyway, I was watching on EuroSport in German so I couldn't really understand the announcers. But all of the sudden out come three athletes marching onto the track of the stadium under the flag of the Palestinian National Authority. Since when do athletes compete for imaginary countries? The Olympic Committee will not allow Taiwan to display it's national flag because it doesn't want to piss off Red China, but they will allow the Palestinians their own team. Gee, why don't I start a team from my own house. I can claim that I am being occupied by the U.S. I think there could be a precedent. The Basques could field a team. How about the Cherokees or Australian Aborigines? And these poor Palestinians got quite an ovation from the assembled crowd. Typical. I didn't see the entrance of the U.S. or Israeli teams. Somehow I doubt they got the same welcome. I'll say this for the team from Palestine. At least they didn't blow themselves up. Well, not yet. Which kind of gets me to the issue of terrorism and these Athens games. There was all sort of concern about the possibility of a terrorist incident, but a week or so in and there has been nothing. I'm not entirely surprised. It would be the worst place to do it. The entire world would be against the terrorists' cause. I realize there was the tragedy of the 1972 Munich games, but I don't think there were many people who rose to the Palestinian cause because they ruthlessly murdered eleven Israeli athletes. Well, no rational people anyway. Now they have their own team. Hmm.
And another thing...