The International Olympic Committee (IOC) has officially banned Iraq competitors in the 2oo8 Beijing Olympics. The reason Iraq athletes are not able to compete in the 2008 Olympics is because of government interference in sports. Iraq’s government system had began removing officials and replacing them with people the IOC was not familiar with. Iraq was planning on sending seven athletes and those places will now be filled by other countries because of Iraq’s suspension from the committee.

Some believe that it is unfair to not allow all the deserving athletes who trained so hard to get to the Olympics to compete, others think they can wait until the 2012 Olympics.

Iraqi athlete (sprinter) Dana Hussain said “In this horrible situation who can say I’ll even be alive in 2012″. What do you think of the situation? Do have a solution? Let us know below on any thoughts that you have the Iraq athletes not being able to compete.

Kamki says: I think that it’s unfair that the Iraqi athletes can’t compete. However I don’t really know what could be done instead, because you can’t have governments interfering with Olympic committees. You need to make it clear that it’s unacceptable without “punishing” athletes. Well why not just let them compete? We still need to have some type of rule and order within the committees. So it’s just kinda of a lose-lose situation. I do feel bad for the athletes, but really what else can you do?

What do you think that the IOC will do about future conflicts like this? Will they use the same plan that they did this time or will they find new solutions?