In case you missed it this week, the International Olympic Committee banned Iraq’s Olympic team from next month’s games in Beijing because of the Iraqi government’s “political interference in the Olympic movement.” This “interference” was the naming of a new national Olympic committee that was not recognized by the IOC. According to the Iraqi government, a new committee was necessary because of corruption on the old one along with the fact that four committee members, including its chairman, had been kidnapped and their whereabouts were unknown. Of course, eight years ago, when Saddam Hussein’s brutal son Uday was in charge of the team—raping, torturing, and murdering athletes who fell short of his expectations—the IOC looked the other way.

An editorial from yesterday’s Washington Post describes the hypocrisy of the current situation:

“That [the IOC] has chosen to crack down on the democratically elected government that replaced the Hussein regime—while welcoming to Beijing Zimbabwe, Burma, Cuba, North Korea and Sudan, all of which it must consider innocent of any ‘political interference’ in sport—says a good deal more about the values of the international Olympic bureaucracy than it does about Iraq.”

Negotiations are underway to get the team reinstated. “We still have the hope the Iraqi flag will fly at the opening ceremony in Beijing,” said Jazair al-Sahlani, a spokesman for the disputed Iraqi Olympic committee.