The International Olympic Committee has banned Iraq from the 2008 Beijing Olympics as a response to the news that the Iraqi Government has dissolved the Iraqi Olympic Committee [which was elected in 2004] and replaced it with a committee that responds to the government’s interest. The people who are paying for this mistake on the part of an Iraqi Government that is nothing more than a puppet government of the Republicans and Democrats are the Iraqi Sportspeople who practiced and hoped to participate in the Olympics. The Iraqi Puppet Government once tried to interfere in the Iraqi Football [Soccer] Association but avoided a last minute ban by backing down from the interference.

It is unfair that those who practice and prepare themselves for such an event cannot participate secondary to a ban on Iraq by the International Olympic Committee. The International Olympic Committee is right in enforcing the rules of separation of politics, government and sports. The International Olympic Committee even extended an invitation to the Government of Iraq to send a representative to meet with them in the International Olympic Committee Headquarters in Switzerland and Iraq did not or would not comply with the meeting.

The International Olympic Committee should at least allow the athletes to compete under the flag of the Olympics as a way to compensate for the injustice committed against them by a government that is supposedly democratic but in reality is a puppet government installed by Washington. The Iraqi Athletes are innocent bystanders of an unfair government and many of them may not have another chance when the next Olympics appears in London in the year 2012. By 2012, the athletes that wanted to participate in the 2008 Olympics will not be able since they are aging. It will be a crime if Iraq participates in 2012 but does not participate in 2008 secondary to a government in Baghdad that could care less about them. While I am a believer of the separation of sports and politics, I think that these athletes who are amateurs and have sacrificed much in order to compete in spite of the conflict within Iraq [caused by the Invasion of and subsequent installation of the puppet government] deserve to be compensated by competing at least under the Olympic Flag. After all, the Olympics are open to all except those who mix drugs with sports.

REFERENCE:
BBC Sports: «Iraq banned from Beijing Olympics»
http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport2/hi/olympics/7523708.stm

Muir, Jim: BBC Sports: «Iraqi athletes face Olympic ban»
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/7450492.stm