I was watching the news with my roommate recently when a report came on about a series of car bombings in Iraq that killed 68 people.  My roommate sighed and shook her head.  “It just keeps getting worse and worse,” she said.

She is wrong.  Although the road to peace and democracy in Iraq is a bumpy one, the country is not worse off today than it was when Saddam Hussein was still in power.  Iraqi citizens now have freedom from torture and are making progress toward freedom from terror.

Every Iraqi citizen has and will continue to benefit from the end of an evil dictator and his mass graves, rape rooms, and torture chambers.  Improvement can be seen in just about every facet of life, but, with the Olympics just days away, perhaps the change in Iraqi athletics is a good place to start when looking to see how the situation in Iraq has improved since the fall of Saddam. 

According to the National Olympic Committee of Iraq, Saddam’s son, Uday Hussein, was in charge of Iraq’s Olympic activities from 1984 until the war began in March of 2003.  During that time, Iraqi athletes went to the Olympics to try their very hardest to win, but not because they loved a sport and wanted to do their best, and certainly not because they loved their country, at least not their country as it was, ruled by a brutal dictator.  They wanted to win not for glory, honor, and patriotism, but for fear?fear of torture, terror, and tyranny.

Uday Hussein expected the best, and he tortured any athlete who did not live up to his expectations.  One boxer was knocked out in the first round of a Gulf States competition, recalled Latif Yahia, a body double for Uday, in a 2003 SportsIllustrated.com report by Don Yaeger.  When Uday saw the boxer after the match, he repeatedly punched him in the face and then jolted him with an electric prod before telling his guards to take him downstairs and finish the job.  Downstairs, Yahia explained, was the basement of the Olympic building, a place devoid of the weight rooms or sports equipment that one might expect to find.  It was a prison where athletes were beaten and tortured.

Sharar Haydar, who defected from Iraq in 1998, said he considered himself lucky because he was only imprisoned four times when he played for the Iraqi national soccer team.  Haydar, who told his story to Tom Farrey of ESPN.com in December of 2002, said he was tortured for the first time in 1993, when the Iraqi national team lost to Jordan in a tournament final.  Haydar and three other players were beaten for four days and not allowed to sleep for more than 30 minutes at a time. 

Later on, Haydar tried to resign, but this suggestion was met with a traditional Arab punishment, falaqa.  Haydar said guards at the Olympic prison whipped his feet 20 times a day for three days and then sent him to another prison where he was laid on his back and dragged by his legs across hot pavement.  Then Haydar was forced to climb a 15-foot ladder and jump into a pit of sewage water so the wounds would become infected.

How times have changed.  Uday is dead and the instruments of torture he once used are now nothing more than relics of the past.  On the weekend of July 24, according to the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, torture devices Uday used on Iraqi athletes were put on display for the media, including finger vises, chain whips, and a steel chamber with spikes. While those devices gather dust, Iraqi athletes prepare for the Olympics, where they will no longer play under the shadow of fear, but instead will represent their country under the auspicious banner of freedom.

In May of this year, the Iraqi soccer team Haydar once played for qualified for the Olympics for the first time ever when they defeated Saudi Arabia, The Washington Post reported.  The team will travel to Athens with six other Iraqi athletes. 

Iraq still has its problems and so does Iraqi athletics, but the country is better off since the U.S.-led coalition arrived.  Najah Ali, a boxer from Baghdad competing in Athens, agreed.

“Just give us time.  We will be all right,” he said in an interview with MSNBC sports.  “Just give us time to get a good government.”

Despite the setbacks, things in Iraq just keep getting better and better.

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