HERE’S MORE ON OLYMPIC-ATHLETE TORTURE under Saddam Hussein. Excerpt:
Tramping through the ruins of the Olympic building, one finds charred letters to Uday from senior officials of the International Olympic Committee, including Juan Antonio Samaranch, the Spaniard who was long its president.
They show no trace of any effort by the international committee’s headquarters in Lausanne, Switzerland, to distance itself from the Iraqi committee and its head, despite years of reports by Western human rights organizations that the Baghdad building was being used for torture and killing.
Right up to the Winter Games in Salt Lake City last year, the correspondence from Lausanne was about the need for Iraq, like other countries, to prepare for the new “disciplines,” like the women’s bobsled competition, being introduced at the Utah Games.
One letter, from the International Olympic Committee’s Fair Play Commission, spoke of the “universal humanistic sports values” of the Olympic movement; another of the “global society” that would be represented by the Olympic Village at Salt Lake City.
As president of Iraq’s Olympic committee, the president’s son was the country’s sports czar. According to several accounts from players, he turned his sadistic obsessions on the national soccer team. . . .
A series of poor passes, carefully counted, could result in a player’s being forced to stand before the president’s son in the dressing room, hands at his side, while he was punched or slapped in the face an equal number of times.
But those were the lesser miseries. Some players endured long periods in a military prison, beaten on their backs with electric cables until blood flowed. Other punishments included “matches” kicking concrete balls around the prison yard in 130-degree heat, and 12-hour sessions of push-ups, sprints and other fitness drills, wearing heavy military fatigues and boots.
And yet there are still some people who say that removing Saddam from power was somehow immoral. But then, Harry Belafonte is still defending Castro, as are quite a few others.
Are there any dictators with bad facial hair that the Left doesn’t support?
UPDATE: Matthew Yglesias puts me in my place for this snide remark. Touche. Note, however, the stirring defense of Saddam Hussein’s “dashing” facial hair in the comments. Heh.