Aug. 20, 2004 – The Bush-Cheney election campaign has outraged Iraq’s national soccer team by using Iraqi Olympians in a new television ad in which a narrator speaks of "freedom spreading throughout the world like a sunrise."
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Talking to Sports Illustrated, Iraqi midfielder Salih Sadir expressed dismay at being used in Bush's re-election propaganda: "Iraq as a team does not want Mr. Bush to use us for the presidential campaign. He can find another way to advertise for himself."
"My problems are not with the American people; they are with what America has done in Iraq: destroy everything," Coach Adnan Hamad added. "The American Army has killed so many people in Iraq. What is freedom when I go to the [national] stadium and there are shootings on the road?"
Ahmed Manajid, whose cousin was an insurgent killed by US soldiers, went even further, saying he would "for sure" be fighting the occupation as a member of the Iraqi resistance were he not playing soccer.
