A revealing report about the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games in Athens: Games Opening Ceremony Full of Spectacle. (Hat tip: Ghost.)

There was huge applause for Afghanistan on its return to Olympic competition after an eight-year absence and with its first female athletes.

The entrance of the more than 500-member U.S. team - led by basketball guard Dawn Staley - drew cheers. But some people also stood and put their thumbs down in an apparent show of displeasure for the war in Iraq. Moments later, the Iraqis entered to a roaring ovation.

So the Europeans are thrilled that Afghans can return to the Olympics with female athletes, and that Iraqi athletes can compete without fear of being tortured by Uday Hussein if they perform badly—but the country that made all of this possible is scorned.

This year we also saw athletes from an imaginary country named “Palestine” receive wild applause from the European audience. An imaginary country whose ambassadors, in 1972, turned the Olympic Games in Munich into a nightmarish bloodbath.

Debbie Schlussel slams the IOC for its nauseating hypocrisy.

The Olympics and its International Olympic Committee (IOC)—both largely funded by millions in U.S. taxpayer dollars—are the ultimate monument to this shameful behavior.

Spielberg isn’t the only party who won’t let us remember the outrageous, preventable September 5, 1972 slaughter of 11 Israeli Olympians and coaches by Yasser Arafat’s Black September terrorists at the Munich Games. At the time, the Games didn’t stop—blaspheming the memories of the innocent, murdered athletes before rigor mortis had even set in.

The bloody Games must go on.

To date, the IOC refuses to allow any memorial to these athletes who gave their lives for this “holy” commercial extravaganza, which today might be called the BALCO Games (in honor of the steroid producer who seems to be unofficial chief sponsor).

At the 2002 Sydney Summer Games, IOC officials loudly disavowed any connection to a memorial to the slain Israeli athletes, and worse, denounced the memorial. At the 1996 Atlanta Games, the IOC refused to organize a commemorative ceremony for the slain athletes, lest the Olympics dare offend the new Palestinian Olympic Team. (Unlike the rest of the world, the IOC already recognizes “Palestine” as a state.)

“It’s not the IOC’s policy to stage special ceremonies,” IOC director general Francois Carrard told USA Today.