The office of the presidency deserves some respect

Even if the president IS George W. Bush, possibly the worst president ever, the office of the presidency itself deserves some respect.

So, the fact that a journalist threw two shoes at W during a press conference deserves some condemnation.

Looking a bit further, though, I see this was an Iraqi journalist (shoe size 10) and there may have been some symbolism:

"Correspondents said the attack was symbolic. Iraqis threw shoes and used them to beat Saddam Hussein's statue after his overthrow."

And then there is the small matter than hundreds of thousands of Iraqis have been killed in various ways since the US invasion, millions are in exile, and we've been caught on film using torture -- without any military higher-ups being sentenced.

Mr Maliki, Iraqi television journalist Muntadar al-Zaidi stood up and shouted "this is a goodbye kiss from the Iraqi people, dog," before hurling a shoe at Mr Bush which narrowly missed him.

Showing the soles of shoes to someone is a sign of contempt in Arab culture.

With his second shoe, which the president also managed to dodge, Mr Zaidi said: "This is for the widows and orphans and all those killed in Iraq."

Take an Iraq Poll with Decent Questions!

Here's an Iraq poll with some decently worded questions. Daryl Kinsman's poll is not perfect, but better than the simplistic questions common in polling.





http://www.darylkinsman.ca/polls/iraq/



(The map is from the University of Texas collection, where you can find a readable version of it.)
www.lib.utexas.edu/maps/thematic.html

Axis of Evil 3, G W Bush 0

Bush identified 3 nations as forming an "Axis of Evil". Let's see how well his administration has done:

Iraq: we replaced Saddam Hussein with an expensive quagmire that likely has made day-to-day life in Iraq even more difficult for them than it was before.

North Korea: now seems to have an atomic bomb and some missiles.

Iran: on its way to being nuclear, and increasingly hostile. It's probably not possible for Iran to avoid becoming nuclear since it is surrounded by nuclear neighbors (India, Pakistan, Israel, Russia), and national pride would be wounded by the thought that a two-bit nation like North Korea got the bomb and they backed down.

In fairness, these have been difficult foreign policy challenges for a long time (we fought a war in Korea in the 1950's, remember), but the current administration has made substantial progress -- unfortunately negative progress.