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| Down Under |
| 3 Iraqi Soccer Players Seek Asylum |
| 2007-11-20 |
| Three members of Iraq's Olympic soccer team and their assistant coach left the team during a trip to Australia and are seeking asylum in the country, Iraq's soccer federation said Monday. |
| Posted by:Fred |
| #1 So I guess things aren't getting better in Iraq after all? Or at least not better fast enough for some people. NOW they need asylum, having abandoned their team to potentially lose in the next round to Syria or Lebanon! "On Saturday, Australia beat Iraq 2-0 to move to the top of an Asian qualifying group for the 2008 Beijing Olympics." "This will cause poor morale, and have a bad psychological effect on the other players," Ahmed said of the asylum request. "This only shows disloyalty to the country," Ahmed said." "Soccer is popular in Iraq, where the national team's successes in the past three years have provided a joyous distraction from the daily violence. But athletes and sports officials have been frequent targets of violence." If all they were worried about was violence against athletes, they could have just quit the team and joined the police. Did they spend too much time amongst the 'Asians' in London or such, learning courage and national loyalty? I'm being harsh - I don't disagree with their actions, merely their rationalization for them. I figure anyone with the opportunity to change from living in Iraq to living in Australia is merely proving their rationality by trying to sieze that opportunity. |
| Posted by: Glenmore 2007-11-20 07:31 |