Sooner Be Blue

Lots of shoe jokes going around...my favorite is "The insurgency is in its last throws."

But it's as frightening as it is funny...and sad for our country.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=duLds-TZMGw

One thing about Bush--he has quick reflexes. Unlike the Secret Service...their protection was crap. He is still the President of the United States, and this journalist should never have been able to raise an arm let alone throw something...twice. If this guy hadn't shouted to signal his intent, he might have connected with his target.

Anyway, this shoe-throwing incident is probably going to be a signature moment in Bush's Presidency...right up there with "Mission Accomplished." The FOX news round table guys were sure groaning about it last night...how no one would see the most important thing -- that Bush freed those people so they could have freedom of shoe speech.

One has to wonder whether Bush would've had any sense at all of how angry many Iraqis are had this not happened.

We all know by now that throwing shoes is an insult in the Middle East, even sitting in a manner that exposes the sole of your shoe to another person is considered impolite. Arabs have insulting phrases that mean "you are a shoe" and "son of a shoe"...which could get you in a serious fight in any Arab city.

We remember when crowds of Iraqis used their shoes to whack a toppled statue of Saddam Hussein in Baghdad after the 2003 invasion. They rubbed those shoes all over his face with glee.

And some might remember that, while still in power, Saddam Hussein heaped scorn on Bush's father by having a mosaic of Bush Senior made on the floor at the entrance of Al-Rashid, Baghdad's main foreign hotel. So, visitors had to step on Bush's face to get in and out.

Interesting that this Iraqi journalist wasn't throwing his shoes in reaction to anything Bush said...this all happened right at the beginning of the press conference. So his reaction was provoked by the mere presence of Bush.

Afterwards, Bush has this goofy grin on his face as he cracks the "all I can report is a size 10" joke while they're dragging the journalist out of the room.

You have the man who almost totally destroyed a country trying to take a bow for it, and getting the equivalent of a rotten tomato tossed at his face. Yet, he seemed unfazed by it, still clowning while the perpetrator is wrestled to the ground.

Later thousands of Iraqis took to the streets in protest...demanding the release of Zaidi, the journalist, praising him as a hero.

Protesters threw shoes at passing US military vehicles...chanting “Down with America!

I guess when Zaidi is released, he'll become their Joe the Plumber. There'll be elections in Iraq in a couple months, along with a proposed referendum on this US/Iraq security arrangement -- which, if it fails, would call for a US withdrawal immediately.

This shoe throwing will no doubt stir up tensions and ugliness between those in the current government (seen as puppets for the Americans) and those on the outside. Tensions which could easily restart the civil war and a return to the grinding violence.

US commanders were already expecting trouble during election time...unstable countries don't need much to go up in flames.

And now a quirky US movement has started. People are organizing to mail their old shoes to Bush at his new home in Preston Hollow....or driving by to throw them on the lawn.