US ‘shoes-for-guns’ program in Iraq backfires

Written By: - Date published: 12:05 pm, December 15th, 2008 - 15 comments
Categories: humour, International, iraq, youtube - Tags:

[The shoe-thrower is a journo from a Baghdad newspaper taking his opportunity to make his feelings known during Bush’s surprise farewell visit to Iraq. In Arab culture, the sole of the shoe, being dirty, is insulting.]

15 comments on “US ‘shoes-for-guns’ program in Iraq backfires ”

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  1. ianmac 1
    15 December 2008 at 12:29 pm

    Bush as the front man for the war on Iraq must be ill briefed or simply uncaring. About a quarter of the population has left the country (about a million in NZ terms) and up to a million civilians or Iraqis others have been killed. (Thats about250,000 in NZ terms.) Imagine how angry those left alive with minimal security, or water, or food or power must feel. Only one dirty shoe Mr Bush? Lucky man or is it lucky puppet. It was always said that if Dick Chaney had died from one of his heart attacks, George W Bush would have had to take over as President! 🙂

  2. Mr Magoo 2
    15 December 2008 at 12:53 pm

    ahahahahahaa….ahahaha….hahaha..snort.

    God that was great.

    Old bushy is too good at dodging bullets after 9 years of…well bush.

  3. Principessa 3
    15 December 2008 at 1:07 pm

    What cracks me up is how fast his protection staff were. That could have been a knife or a gun.

  4. Mr Magoo 4
    15 December 2008 at 3:21 pm

    Anyone else notice the protetion staff piling in from the back room through the door?

  5. Kerry 5
    15 December 2008 at 4:16 pm

    the bastard ducked!!!

  6. QoT 6
    15 December 2008 at 5:10 pm

    Seriously, WTF Secret Service. Now, sure, the guy probably had to pass through a million and one security checkpoints and metal detectors. But he had time to bend down, take off a second shoe, and throw it. As someone on an LJ community I read pointed out, what if it had been a bag of acid?

  7. Felix 7
    15 December 2008 at 5:53 pm

    “what if it had been a bag of acid?”

    According to reputable comic book experts, Bush would gain superpowers. And probably live in a sewer.

  8. northpaw 8
    15 December 2008 at 6:41 pm

    felix,

    Jesting aside, (the surprise of that remark cracked me up) which acid were these experts talking about..

    According to reputable comic book experts, Bush would gain superpowers. And probably live in a sewer.

  9. Pascal's bookie 9
    16 December 2008 at 8:31 am

    The insurgency in Iraq is “in the last throes”

    Vice President Dick Cheney, June 20, 2005

  10. Joe Blogger 10
    16 December 2008 at 10:48 am

    How ironic that with the freedom the President Bush and the American people have given this Iraqi Journalist he now has the ability to safely protest against them. While if he had attempted this under Saddam’s regime him, him immediate family and quite probably extended family would have all been tortured and then executed.

  11. deemac 11
    16 December 2008 at 11:09 am

    yes joe, he’s an ungrateful bastard…
    as anyone who’s read anything on the subject knows, people are still being tortured and murdered in Iraq tho the US forces have now largely outsourced this function
    (there is no prize for being the last person on the planet still praising the invasion of Iraq)

  12. Joe Blogger 12
    16 December 2008 at 12:22 pm

    Deemac,

    The Iraq situation is ugly, nasty and personally I don’t want to see anymore of my friends or family serve there (3 to date). However lets not pretend that its any more ugly or nasty than it was before.

    I deplore Bush’s reasons for invading Iraq, the whole WMD was garbage and anybody with half a brain knew that it was at the time. I don’t however have a problem with the invasion itself though. Personally I believe that the world has a moral obligation to ensure all people have the right to live without fear of torture, indiscriminate murder etc and the evil dictators like Saddam, Mugabi have no right to rule when they start carrying out such actions.

    However lets be honest about it and not look to excuses like WMDs and that there are clearly define plans on going in, restoring order and leaving.

  13. Pascal's bookie 13
    16 December 2008 at 9:52 pm

    Joe, it seems to me that you perhaps you wouldn’t have had any problems with some different invasion that took place in some alternate universe.

    In this universe the invasion was predicated on a whole bunch of lies, badly managed, and resulted in hundreds of thousands of deaths, years of insurgency and a brutal suppression of same, massive ‘ethnic cleansing’ with millions of refugees both internal and external. It has resulted in Iraq having a government whose closest ties are to Iran and has unfolded such that the US is now known to be a torture state.

    As for whether this is worse than Saddam, I’d say it’s a close run thing.

  14. Pascal's bookie 14
    17 December 2008 at 8:00 am

    The journo is yet to be released, has been in court supporting an arm that we are told was broken in the struggle of his arrest.

    Perhaps in the new Iraq prisoners are yet to be the beneficiaries of ‘the right not to keep falling down the stairs on the way to their cells’.

    http://firedoglake.com/2008/12/15/shoe-thrower-being-tortured/

    http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20081216/wl_nm/us_iraq_bush_shoes_9

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