From Holden:

I mentioned yesterday that the Iraqi Olympic soccer team does not like the fact that the Bush campaign has used them in their advertising (with one team member saying that if he were not in Athens he would be fighting with the insurgency in Fallujah). Now the US Olympic Committee is complaining that Bush/Cheney 2004 is violating their copyright:

The Bush-Cheney campaign defended on Friday its use of the Olympics in a televised political advertisement that began running this month on national cable stations that are broadcasting the games from Athens.

“We are on firm legal ground to mention the Olympics to make a factual point in a political advertisement,” said Scott Stanzel, a spokesman for the campaign.

The advertisement had come under fire from the United States Olympic Committee, which asked the campaign to stop running it. Federal copyright laws have granted the Olympic committee exclusive rights to the term “Olympics.”

The campaign did not seek permission from the committee to use the word or the idea of the games, nor does it plan to respond to the committee’s request to stop the advertisement, a campaign official said.