Born in I.R.A.Q.
OK kids, this might take some sorting through the mists of memory, but hark back to the 1984 election when Bruce Springsteen's Born in the U.S.A. was a monster smash, and the title song was riding high on the charts. Some Reagan campaign officials decided it would be the perfect soundtrack for some campaign stops for President Ronny (completely shunning any understanding of the song's subtext, which is certainly not "Rah! Rah! America!"). The Boss was not asked for use permission and called on the campaign to cease and desist (beginning the trend that some, like Bill O'Really, point to as the emergence of The Boss as a commie leftist pinko).

Well, another sitting Republican President is using another seemingly pop culture phenomenon for patriotic gain: the success of the Iraqi men's soccer team in the Olympics:

In (TV ad) spots, the flags of Iraq and Afghanistan appear as a narrator says, "At this Olympics there will be two more free nations -- and two fewer terrorist regimes."

[...]

At a speech in Beaverton, Ore., last Friday, Bush attached himself to the Iraqi soccer team after its opening-game upset of Portugal. "The image of the Iraqi soccer team playing in this Olympics, it's fantastic, isn't it?" Bush said. "It wouldn't have been free if the United States had not acted."

This doesn't sit well with midfielder Salih Sadir:

"Iraq as a team does not want Mr. Bush to use us for the presidential campaign," Sadir told�SI.com through a translator, speaking calmly and directly. "He can find another way to advertise himself."

How ungrateful! Don't they realize we came to give the Iraqi people their freedom (after the excuse of WMD collapsed... you remember the one, the one no one mentions any more):

To a man, members of the Iraqi Olympic delegation say they are glad that former Olympic committee head Uday Hussein, who was responsible for the serial torture of Iraqi athletes and�was killed�four�months�after the U.S.-led coalition invaded Iraq�in March 2003, is no longer in power.

But they also find it offensive that Bush is using their team for his own gain when they do not support his administration's actions in Iraq. "My problems are not with the American people," says Iraqi soccer coach Adnan Hamad. "They are with what America has done in Iraq: destroy everything. 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?"