Iraq V: About Those Tennis Players

The victims of Iraqi-on-Iraqi violence range across the board, but the deaths of the national tennis team's coach and its No. 1 and 4 ranked players for wearing shorts in public stood out.

Well, all three men are still dead, but it should be noted in the wake of the Wimbledon finals that it turns out their mode of dress had nothing to do with their passing.

Haider Abbud, a NATO advisor in Iraq, now says they were killed because one of the players, who hailed from a town that is a hotbed of the insurgency, was approached and asked to drive a car bomb and detonate it in a neighborhood said to be frequented by Americans. The player refused, so the insurgents changed their plans and killed the tennis players instead.

"It had nothing to do with wearing shorts," Haider said. "These guys were very traditional and correct about things like that."

More at Tennis World here, and a hat tip to Andrew Sullivan at The Daily Dish.