Iraqi Soccer Players Slam 'Criminal' Bush

The Scotsman.com

http://news.scotsman.com/latest.cfm?id=3378141

By Mark Sage, PA News, in New York

Iraqi Soccer Players Slam 'Criminal' Bush

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Members of the Iraqi Olympic soccer team branded US President George Bush a ?criminal? and called for American troops to pull out of the war-torn country.

Speaking after winning their group stage at the Games in Greece, one player said he would take up arms against US troops in his country.

And the team attacked Mr Bush for running re-election campaign adverts featuring the Iraqi team.

?Iraq as a team does not want Mr Bush to use us for the presidential campaign,? said midfielder Salih Sadir.

?He can find another way to advertise himself.?

Sadir was angered at Mr Bush?s adverts, which show pictures of the Afghan and Iraqi flags with the words: ?At this Olympics there will be two more free nations ? and two fewer terrorist regimes.?

?We don?t wish for the presence of Americans in our country. We want them to go away,? said Sadir, 21, whose home town of Najaf has been battered by the war.

Another star player, Ahmed Manajid, 22, said of Mr Bush: ?How will he meet his god having slaughtered so many men and women??

?He has committed so many crimes.?

Manajid, from Fallujah, said he would be fighting US troops right now if he were not at the Olympics.

?I want to defend my home. If a stranger invades America and the people resist, does that mean they are terrorists?

?Everyone (in Fallujah) has been labelled a terrorist. These are all lies. Fallujah people are some of the best people in Iraq.?

In an interview with the US magazine Sports Illustrated, the team coach Adnan Hamad told of the ongoing violence in his homeland.

?My problems are not with the American people. 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??

The team was glad that Iraq?s former Olympic committee head Uday Hussein, who was responsible for the serial torture of Iraqi athletes, was no longer in power.

He was killed in a firefight with US forces after the invasion.

A spokesman for Mr Bush defended the war on Iraq and the campaign adverts.

?The ad simply talks about President Bush?s optimism and how democracy has triumphed over terror,? the spokesman said.

?Twenty-five million people in Iraq are free as a result of the actions of the coalition.?

The Iraqi soccer team has been one of the sensations of the Games, winning its group, despite a 2-1 defeat to Morocco in its latest game.

The team will go on to play Australia in the quarter finals on Sunday.