It may turn out to be one of the most lasting images of the Bush presidency. The leader of the free world ducks as an angry journalist throws a shoe at him. President Bush was in Iraq to sign an agreement that would require -- by Iraqi and international law -- that occupying US forces withdraw. Shoes were thrown, things went haywire, and we had the Iraq war in miniature -- a nearly perfect metaphor for the whole thing. While Bush was talking about how wonderful things are in Iraq, Iraqis hate him for how awful things are in Iraq. Telling that lie here, where we're protected from the truth by a play-along media, is one thing. Telling that lie there, where they live with the truth every day, is another thing entirely.Middle east expert Juan Cole tells us that the shoe-thrower, Muntazir al-Zaidi, was reacting to the things he had witnessed in his country, calling out, "Killer of Iraqis, killer of children!" as the guards took him down.
[Zaidi] had covered the US bombing of Sadr City last spring, in support of PM Nuri al-Maliki's incursion into this stronghold of the Sadr Movement and its Mahdi Army, and is said to have been emotionally affected by the sight of that destruction
The frequent US bombing of civilian Iraqi cities that are already under US military occupation has been one of the most under-reported stories of the Iraq War.
Raining death from above tends to make people angry, I guess. As an American, I wouldn't know -- that's just something that happens in other places. Places we invade. It's the sort of thing that we do to other countries, so I wouldn't have any idea what it feels like, what it looks like, what it smells like, or how it the memories wake you up in a cold sweat. Never having been on the receiving end of aerial bombings, I'm not in a position to know these sort of things. Living within the empire has its privileges... [CLICK TO READ FULL POST]
