The Iraqi Olympic team has been through some hardships over the last few years. The tae kwon do team were kidnapped, killed, and buried in a mass grave. The head of the National Olympic Committee had the same fate befall him. Numerous other athletes over the last 25 years and three wars have been killed and maimed.

(Iraqi Paralympic weightlifter Zekra Zaki)

However, Iraqi athletes have a curiously positive outlook, developed out of necessity and perhaps a mark of the Iraqi people themselves. How else could they find slivers of upside in such horrors?

““As a country that participated in many wars since 1980, we have many disabled people,” said Ahmed Abid Hassan, a wheelchair fencing coach. “Our Paralympic team is better than our Olympic team.””

While Iraq has only one qualified athlete in the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing (and may not even be able to send that weightlifter if the IOC doesn’t reinstate the Iraq National Olympic Committee after suspending them for the country’s political interference in Olympic matters), there are 20 Paralympic athletes headed to Beijing. Many have realistic medal aspirations.

Most of those 20 are disabled war veterans, which sticks to the spirit of the original Paralympics (home to British WWII veterans’ athletic aspirations after the war ended). However, Iraq isn’t the only country seeing an increase in disabled athletes due to the current conflict: Americans are seeing more disabled athletes than any time since Vietnam.