printAs CNN reports, Bush traveled to Iraq
To celebrate the conclusion of the security pact, called the Strategic Framework Agreement and the Status of Forces Agreement, the White House said.
The pact will replace a U.N. mandate for the U.S. presence in Iraq that expires at the end of this year. The agreement, reached after months of negotiations, sets June 30, 2009, as the deadline for U.S. combat troops to withdraw from all Iraqi cities and towns. The date for all U.S. troops to leave Iraq is December 31, 2011.
During a news conference, “an angry Iraqi man jumped up and threw shoes at Bush… President Bush … ducked … as Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki tries to protect him Sunday. …Throwing shoes at someone, or sitting so that the bottom of a shoe faces another person, is considered an insult among Muslims.”
If only Muslims confined themselves to shoe tossing. It’s far preferable to bomb throwing.
“The man was dragged out screaming after throwing the shoes.”
Of course, Iraqis, of whom millions have been displaced and tens of thousands killed due to Bush’s war, have every reason in the world to throw boots, baklava, or even bombs at Bush.
Bush responded fast and well: He joked about the incident and asserted that protest was the hallmark of a free society, blah, blah.
As I have observed before, “the Bush administration might just have taken the wind out of the war as an issue for Barack Obama. As it is, Obama had grown weaker on that front, his position increasingly converging with McCain’s. But if Bush finalizes the withdrawal, he will have taken the issue and the decision away from Obama. Strategically, it’s a smart move.”
As for the shoeing Iraqi, I’ve said it again and again: impeachment and war-crimes prosecutions is what this administration deserves for launching an unjust war, an obligation the opportunistic Democrats would never fulfill.
Democrats supported the war en masse. Over half of Senate democrats voted to authorize the war. It is unlikely that they will indict President Bush on war-crimes charges. They would also be indicting themselves. Bush may have been the driving force for the war, but he couldn’t have waged it without the dems’ complicity. Vote Buchanan.
Muntazer al-Zaidi is undoubtably the most popular man in Iraq today.
I agree with Dan. There’s only one political party in this country: the big government party. What could be more beneficial to the state than a foreign war, regardless of how immoral and unjust it is? More power, more spending, more control for the political hacks. Call the tens of thousands slaughtered for no useful purpose “collateral damage.”
“Flying Shoes Create a Hero In Arab World” – see http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/12/15/AR2008121500161.html
– apparently, a Saudi businessman wants to buy the shoes for $ 10 million. Ignoring whether some of the Islamic hatred is or isn’t irrational – you can appreciate the feelings that people have against American occupation. Sadly, Bush and much of America is completely clueless. /// To Steve and Dan – not only is the duopolistic Demopublican Republicrats in favor of interventionism but they also support socialism in the financial, auto, and health care industries and the Weimar inflationary bailoutologists of the Federal Reserve system. On rare occasions, a few politicians get it right but often for the wrong reasons.