Dubya finally gets the boot (sort of)

[Captain Picard's Hair]

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/15/world ... xy.html?hp

[Captain Picard's Hair]

But his appearance at a news conference here was interrupted by a man, apparently a journalist, who leaped to his feet and threw one shoe at the president, who ducked and narrowly missed being struck. Chaos ensued. He threw a second shoe, which also narrowly missed Mr. Bush. The man was roughly 12 feet from the lecturn in the center of two rows ofchairs, about two feet from a pool of reporters. A scrum of security agents descended on the man and wrestled him, first to the floor and then out of the ornate room where the news conference was taking place.

The president was uninjured and brushed off the incident. "All I can report is it is a size 10," he said jokingly. An Iraqi accompanying the pool of reporters, colleague said the man had shouted, "This is a farewell kiss, dog."

[Captain Seafort]

A surprise visit by US President George Bush to Iraq has been overshadowed by an incident in which two shoes were thrown at him during a news conference.

An Iraqi journalist was wrestled to the floor by security guards after he called Mr Bush "a dog" and threw his footwear, just missing the president.

The soles of shoes are considered the ultimate insult in Arab culture.

During the trip, Mr Bush and Iraqi PM Nouri Maliki signed the new security agreement between their countries.

The pact calls for US troops to leave Iraq in 2011 - eight years after the 2003 invasion that has in part defined the Bush presidency.

Speaking just over five weeks before he hands over power to Barack Obama, Mr Bush also said the war in Iraq was not over and more work remained to be done.

His previously unannounced visit came a day after US Defence Secretary Robert Gates told US troops the Iraq mission was in its "endgame".

'Size 10'

In the middle of the news conference with Mr Maliki, a reporter stood up and shouted "this is a goodbye kiss from the Iraqi people, dog," before hurtling his shoes at Mr Bush, narrowly missing him.

"All I can report is a size 10," Mr Bush said according to the Associated Press news agency.

The shoe thrower was taken away by security guards and the news conference continued.

Correspondents called it a symbolic incident. Iraqis threw shoes and used them to beat Saddam Hussein's statue in Baghdad after his overthrow.

'American security'

Mr Bush's first stop upon arriving in Baghdad was the Iraqi presidential palace in the heavily-fortified Green Zone, where he held talks with President Jalal Talabani.

"The work hasn't been easy but it's been necessary for American security, Iraqi hope and world peace," Mr Bush said during his talks with Mr Talabani.

The Iraqi president called Mr Bush "a great friend for the Iraqi people, who helped us liberate our country".

The BBC's Humphrey Hawksley, in Baghdad, says the key issue at present is exactly how American troops will withdraw within the next three years and what sort of Iraq they will leave behind.

The US media has just published details of a US government report saying that post invasion reconstruction of Iraq was crippled by bureaucratic turf wars and an ignorance of the basic elements of Iraqi society.

The report is circulating among US officials in draft form, says the New York Times.

It reveals details of a reconstruction effort that cost more than $100bn (£67bn) and only succeeded in restoring what was destroyed in the invasion and the widespread looting that followed it, the newspaper said.

Troop promises

Mr Bush's visit, unannounced in advance and conducted under tight security, follows the approval last month of a security pact between Washington and Baghdad that calls for US troops to be withdrawn from Iraq by the end of 2011.

US troops are first to withdraw from Iraqi cities, including Baghdad, by June next year.

Defence Secretary Gates said on Saturday that "the process of the drawdown" had begun.

"We are, I believe, in terms of the American commitment, in the endgame here in Iraq," he told US troops at an airbase near Baghdad.

Mr Gates has been picked to stay on as defence secretary by President-elect Barack Obama.

President Bush leaves the White House in less than six weeks. He said in a recent interview with ABC News that the biggest regret of his presidency was the false intelligence that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction.

Finding these was one of the key justifications for the invasion. None were ever found.

Mr Obama has promised to bring home US combat troops from Iraq in a little over a year from when he takes office in January.

More than 4,200 US troops and tens of thousands of Iraqi civilians and security personnel have been killed since the invasion in 2003.

There are currently about 149,000 US soldiers in Iraq, down from last year's peak of 170,000 after extra troops were poured in to deal with a worsening security situation.

As Mr Bush arrived in Baghdad, Gen David Petraeus, the head of the US Central Command, which includes Iraq, said attacks in the country had dropped from 180 a day in June 2007 to 10 a day now.

In a sign of modest security gains in Iraq, Mr Bush was welcomed with a formal arrival ceremony - a flourish that was not part of his previous three visits.

He arrived in the country on Air Force One, which landed at Baghdad International Airport in the afternoon, after a secretive Saturday night departure from Washington on an 11-hour flight.

Good reaction time from Bush, albeit in reponse to a rather shoddy aim. I've never seen him move so quickly.

[Captain Seafort]

Duplicate threads merged.

[Tsukiyumi]

Dang. You guys beat me to the punch.

Ah, but I have something your link didn't CPH: a video. It's over at the top left.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/bush

[Sionnach Glic]

Wow, that guy was dumb.

[RK_Striker_JK_5]

Dumb, yes, but tell me, Rochey. How badass was this guy? How many people would love to throw their shoes at this supreme idiot?

[Aaron]

Let this be a lesson to the next guy: use a safety boot, they weigh more.

[Tsukiyumi]

Let this be a lesson to the next guy: use a safety boot, they weigh more.

I was going to say steel-toe, but I suspect they're the same thing.

[Aaron]

I was going to say steel-toe, but I suspect they're the same thing.

Yeah, the ones with the green CSA triangle. Steel-toe, steel-shank.

[Mikey]

Has nobody ever heard of bricks?

[Sionnach Glic]

The guy was in a room full of cameras. Ergo, throw one of the freaking cameras.

[shran]

Why even waste a camera on Bush? I expect them to be expensive, whereas I wouldn't want to spend such an amount of money on trying to insult or hurt a president.

[Mikey]

Now, that Iraqi journalist has to stand in some holding cell... barefoot.

[Captain Seafort]

And the saga of the shoe continues

Thousands of Iraqis have demanded the release of a local TV reporter who threw his shoes at US President George W Bush at a Baghdad news conference.

Crowds gathered in Baghdad's Sadr City district, calling for "hero" Muntadar al-Zaidi to be freed from custody.

Officials at the Iraqi-owned TV station, al-Baghdadiya, called for the release of their journalist, saying he was exercising freedom of expression.

Iraqi officials have described the incident as shameful.

A statement released by the government said Mr Zaidi's actions, which also included him shouting insults at President Bush, "harmed the reputation of Iraqi journalists and Iraqi journalism in general".

Correspondents say the protesters are supporters of Shia cleric Moqtada Sadr - a leading critic of the US presence in Iraq. Smaller protests were reported in Basra and Najaf.

The Iraqi government has demanded an on-air apology from his employer.

An Iraqi official was quoted by the Associated Press as saying that the journalist was being interrogated to determine whether anybody paid him to throw his shoes at President Bush.

He was also being tested for alcohol and drugs, and his shoes were being held as evidence, said the official, speaking on condition of anonymity.

The Cairo-based al-Baghdadiya TV channel said Mr Zaidi should be freed because he had been exercising freedom of expression - something which the Americans had promised to Iraqis on the ousting of former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein.

"Any measures against Muntadar will be considered the acts of a dictatorial regime," the firm said in a statement.

The programming director for al-Baghdadiya, Muzhir al-Khafaji, described the journalist as a "proud Arab and an open-minded man".

He said he was afraid for Mr Zaidi's safety, adding that the reporter had been arrested by US officials twice before.

"We fear that our correspondents in Iraq will be arrested. We have 200 correspondents there," he added.

'Proud Arab'

Mr Zaidi leapt from his chair at Sunday's news conference and hurled first one shoe and then the other at Mr Bush, who was joined at the podium by Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Maliki.

The shoes missed as Mr Bush ducked, and Mr Zaidi was immediately wrestled to the ground by security guards and frogmarched from the room.

"This is a farewell kiss, you dog," he yelled in Arabic as he threw his shoes. "This is from the widows, the orphans and those who were killed in Iraq."

Arabic TV stations have been repeatedly showing footage of the incident, which was also front-page news in many papers.

Correspondents say the journalist's tirade was echoed by Arabs across the Middle East who are fed up with US policy in the region.

"He [George Bush] deserves to be hit with 100, not just one or two shoes. Who wants him to come here?" said a man in Baghdad.

But his view was not expressed by everyone.

"I think this incident is unnecessary, to be honest. That was a press conference, not a war. If someone wants to express his opinion he should do so in the proper manner, not this way," said another Baghdad resident.

Courts criticised

Also on Monday, Human Rights Watch accused Iraq's main criminal court of failing to meet basic international standards of justice.

The New York-based group said torture and abuse of prisoners before trial appeared common, and legal representation was often ineffectual.

Human Rights Watch said some of the court's failings showed disturbing similarities to those that existed during the Saddam Hussein era.

The group called on Iraq to take immediate steps to protect detainees from torture, and ensure they had access to proper defence and received a prompt hearing.

Bush is impressing me somewhat with his response to this.