Posted on 07/24/2008 9:11:07 PM PDT by pgkdan
Iraq banned from Beijing Olympics
Seven Iraqi athletes from five different sports qualified for the Olympics Athletes from Iraq have been banned from taking part at this summer's Beijing Games, the International Olympic Committee has announced...
(Excerpt) Read more at news.bbc.co.uk ...
What’s the problem, not enough oil money to buy steroids?
Interesting. Thanks for posting.
The US needs to pull out too, then.
Saddam’s son torturing Iraqi Olympic athletes didn’t bother the IOC. But the democratically elected Iraqi govt. picking their own Olympic committee did bother them.
We really should boycott these Olympics. The corruption, cheating and drug use renders it all a waste of time. Hopefully, NBC will get terrible ratings.
I absolutely hate the level of politics that revolves around the olympics. But giving China the games was one of the biggest boondoggles of olympic history. Given the recent activities of the chicoms including,
1) Denying visas to the US female gymnist alternates this week to make them practice and sit waiting in Japan was such a massive attempted manipulation of an event, I’m left speechless that the IOC is doing nothing about this. The chicoms aren’t going to get their most coveted gold medals in the games, the female gymnastics, so they instead pull this crap at the last minute. Ofcourse the ever corrupt IOC is completely silent and katowing to anything the chicoms try to pull.
2) China demanding that taiwan be refered to as “Teipei-China” at the games.
3) The IOC banning Iraqi athletes from competing which I believe was directly a political based move with China and Russia heavily involved.
4) Chicoms demanding no live broadcasting of events and everything needs to be approved by their censors first.
Thats the final straw. I was begrudgingly going to support the US competeing at these games, but no more. Its time to shut this down. Its an insult to everything this country stands for to compete in the Beijing olympics. Time to shut it down. I’m talking boycott unless all 4 points I just listed are reversed.
Since the IOC pays for many of the third world countries to attend the games (many of which would not afford to field an Olympic team otherwise); and since one way or another most of that money comes from the US; I would think that we could find a way to persuade the IOC to let the Iraqi athletes—
who are supposed to be what this is about—
have their chance in the games.
I wonder if W will boycott to stand in solidarity with the Iraqis.
Ahmad al-Samarra'i, chairman of the committee dismissed by the government, and several other members had previously been abducted by gunmen while attending a meeting in central Baghdad in July 2006.
No offense was meant to actual athletes or members of the Iraqi sports comitee.
I was making a broader smart-ass remark.
Little good news coming out of the IOC and the Chinese Olympics.
You couldn’t pay me to watch this abomination.
I agree.
I’m with you these games are a disgrace. They don’t want live coverage becasue it won’t look good when athletes and spectators start collapsing due to breathing solid chuunks of polluted air and they don’t want any coverage of black or mongolian visitorsss being harrassed. These games are going to be a cluster-f***of monumental and historic proportions.
I’d like to talk about this on my blog. Where can I find more information about those four things and more? Do you have a reference, for example, for the first one?
Under the IOC charter, all committees must be free of political influence.
I'm sure the Chinese Olympic committee is a paragon of political independence.
That's exactly what I thought. This sucks.
This is just one more reason to boycott.
I was against politicizing the Olympics by boycotting, but the IOC has made it so political themselves, they deserve to crash and burn this year.
Just the IOC’s way of sticking it to the US.
“If my little sister can’t come too...I’m not going either”.
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