ìIn Midst of Chaos, Sweet Victory: Iraqi Soccer Win Over Rival Saudi Arabia a Welcome Distraction,î by Jackie Spinner, Washington Post, 27 July, p. A19.

Heartwarming tale about Iraqís national soccer team beating arch rival Saudi Arabia, winner of the last 3 Asian Cups: at least the resulting gunfire was only celebratory (unless you happened to catch one of those many bullets coming down later . . .).

Is it just me, or does anyone else notice how Baghdad resembles L.A. in terms of celebrating sports victories?

Anyway, I digress. Hereís the real point of story: Remember recent blog I did about how Brazil is leading UN peacekeeping effort in Haiti and one of the first things they did to try and win over the population was to have their all-star national soccer team come and put on an exhibition game in Haiti?

Well, Iraqís only Olympic entry this year is its soccer team, which qualified by beating Saudi Arabia in May in a game played in Jordan. Why play the game in Jordan? Not enough security at home?

Naw. Real reason was far more prosaic. The U.S. military commandeered the teamís stadium in Baghdad to use as a parking lot, so the team has to practice and play any home games in neighboring Jordan.

Admittedly, Iraq is more dangerous than Haiti and any game would have made a tempting terrorist target, although one doubts any terrorist would risk alienating the populace by killing national soccer stars. But remember this: U.S. civil affairs teams operating in Iraq have had great success whenever theyíve distributed soccer balls among the youth. Knowing that, youíd think weíd make the effort to park our vehicles elsewhere and make sure the beloved national soccer team could play at home, if no other reason that stuff like that makes people awfully damn happy (speaking as a Packer fan who feels great emotion over every single shred of information about the team, much less any actual games, MUCH LESS ANY I CAN ACTUALLY ATTEND IN PERSON!).

So that seems like a bit of a screw-up on our part, perhaps explained by our far greater devotion to the NFL than MSL. May seem like small lesson learned, but talk to a Civil Affairs officer sometime and theyíll tell you that there is no such thing as a detail too small to care about when youíre trying to do serious Sys Admin work.

Hereís the last nice bit from the article. Under Saddam, when the national team lost, his oldest son Uday, kingpin of Iraqi sports, would jail or torture the players he deemed responsible. As one fan explained it: ìThey used to fear when they played. It wasnít sport. Now they play for their own interest.î

Well, at least we got that part right by taking down Saddam and killing his little fiends.