“Amusing,” “interesting” and “weird” is how Pres. Bush, in an interview with ABC News’s Martha Raddatz, described the incident over the weekend during which an Iraqi television reporter threw two shoes at him during a joint press conference with Prime Minister Maliki in Baghdad. (Politico’s Mike Allen reports: “Journalists at the scene said the hurler was Muntadar al-Zaidi, a reporter for Al-Baghdadia TV, an independent satellite channel based in Cairo.”)
In the below footage, you’ll hear an MSNBC reporter explain that the “hurler” “screamed, ‘This is a farewell kiss, you dog,’” as he launched the shoes at Bush and that “in the Arab culture, the sole of the shoe is considered an insult. So this was the reporter’s way of insulting President Bush during his surprise visit to Baghdad.”
UPDATE: Also from that moments-after-ducking-the-shoes interview with ABC’s Raddatz, during an exchange about Bush’s legacy:
PRES. BUSH: …one of the major theaters against Al Qaeda turns out to have been Iraq…
RADDATZ: But not until after the U.S. invaded…BUSH: Yeah, that, that’s right. So what?
That George W has no insight is not news. It WAS news eight years ago, but it's old hat now.
What is intriguing is why the reportage is not featuring the context of the rpeporter's actions in light of his history of having been kidnapped, tortured, terrorized - while reporting - and then returning to work without having received mental health care (supposition on my part because it has been reported that only a literal handful, if that, of psychiatrists remain in Iraq, the rest having been killed, kidnapped of having fled with their families. The mental illness bed capacity is also amlost nil
For that man with his untreated traumas to be sitting in front of the man who represents the root cause of them all must have been unbearable.
Preemptive violence is never appropriate. But look at the harm it does to both the perpetrators (Bush and his signs of untreated mental illness) and its victims. And then here we all are - the co-dependents in it since we have failed to hold our government accountable for it.
It's madness on a global scale. An epic tragedy.
And as a coda, there are credible reports that the reporter is being tortured and beaten now.
Posted by Annie on Mon 15 Dec 2008 at 01:00 PM
I know what his beef was, he was a jew hating Hussien sycophant, that was his problem.
Posted by Larry Solomon on Mon 15 Dec 2008 at 01:23 PM
Security concerns aside, that reporter was expressing the indignation of the world when he threw those shoes. I'm sorry he missed.
Posted by PiedType.com on Mon 15 Dec 2008 at 10:06 PM
I am not sure what the jew comment above is about but certainly the world should praise the reporter for doing what should have been done years ago.......you too jew boy...
Posted by Mark Tishman on Mon 15 Dec 2008 at 11:00 PM
Funny, This New Languge of expresstion,
Arabs are by all means behind the whole world,
(The civilized World).
They Insist on Being like this, and confirmed everyday,in their action,words,and clothing they wear....
Posted by Remy on Wed 17 Dec 2008 at 05:41 AM
I know what his beef is. Base on the what he has said publicly and who was out in force demonstrating for him, I'll bet he is Mahdi (or was) at some point in his insignificant life. An insignificant life that unfortunately was not snuffed out in Najaf when I was there.
Posted by Al on Wed 17 Dec 2008 at 10:20 AM
Bush is an ass. He deserved a shoe to be thrown at him. The man who threw the shoe deserves a Nobel Prize.
Posted by Jim on Thu 19 Feb 2009 at 11:07 AM