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Being an elite athlete in Iraq is still dangerous. The late Uday Hussein, Saddam's son, used torture as a motivational technique when he oversaw Iraqi sports bodies, including its Olympic teams. But an HBO Real Sports report debuting Tuesday suggests athletes in Iraq now are being systematically kidnapped, tortured and sometimes killed by insurgents who see undermining sports as a way of undercutting order. HBO producer Chapman Downes says "there's no way" to pin down which groups are responsible for various incidents, which include National Olympic Committee President Ahmed Al-Samarrai "a total idealist" and 23 other still-missing Olympic staffers being abducted in July 2006. But he says Ali Fadhil, a freelancer who reported in Iraq for Real Sports and was once a physician in that country, talked to the athletes there who feel continually endangered. Such as a boxer who said snipers "would pick off athletes as they came out of his gym." Even after Iraq's soccer team this summer won the Asian Cup tournament, none of the players felt it was safe to return home. HBO reports on a sports training school for athletic kids that's "incredibly sad. It's depressing. The principal talks about getting death threats on a daily basis. Why do the kids do it? The alternative is to just hole up in their houses." -- USA Today

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