Shoe-Thrower had been Traumatized by US Aerial Bombings
Iraqi journalist Muntazir al-Zaidi, who threw the shoes at Bush in Baghdad, shouted "Killer of Iraqis, killer of children." while security guards piled on him. 
McClatchy reports that he had covered the US bombing of Sadr City last spring, in support of PM Nuri al-Maliki's incursion into this stronghold of the Sadr Movement and its Mahdi Army, and is said to have been emotionally affected by the sight of that destruction.
Courtesy of Newsweek
The frequent US bombing of civilian Iraqi cities that are already under US military occupation has been one of the most under-reported stories of the Iraq War.
Baghdadiya Television, for which al-Zaidi works, on Monday demanded his release from custody.
Even as Bush spoke of the situation in Iraq in glowing terms, guerrillas set off three bombs in the capital on Sunday, wounding 17 persons.
In the northern, largely Sunni Arab city of Mosul, guerrillas badly wounded the dean of the college of medicine in a gun attack on Sunday. On Monday morning, guerrillas invaded the home of Yazidis in the north and killed 7 family members. The Salafi Jihadi Sunnis deeply dislike the Yazidis, who follow a pre-Islamic, Iranian folk religion.
As usual, Bush had to sneak in and out of Iraq under a shroud of secrecy, giving the lie to his assertions about its good security situation.
British forces will have to leave Iraq by July 31 under a 'mini-agreement' crafted by the Iraqi cabinet. It lacks the detail of the Status of Forces Agreement negotiated between Baghdad and Washington, and the Times of London calls it 'humiliating.' In the absence of this 'mini-agreement,' British troops might have had to depart in January for lack of legal cover for their operations in Basra.
The dramatic fall in the price per barrel of petroleum in recent months is threatening Iraq's budget and could lead to layoffs of government workers and cutbacks in food aid to the poor.
This interview with Maj. Gen. Mark P. Hertling, the 1st Armored Division commander, who has been in Samarra, is refreshing for its candor even as the general rightly stresses the improvements in the security situation.
There are still 400 attacks a month in Iraq; unemployment ranges from 40% to 80%; the infrastructure of the country is completely dilapidated, with the Beiji refinery an ecological disaster; and the Shiite government shows no interest in the welfare and progress of the Sunni Arab north-- "It would be like having a central government in Bonn that didn’t care anything about what was going on in Wiesbaden or Frankfurt . . ."
Mosul, long 'off the political map' of the Shiite government in Baghdad, is hoping that provincial elections will bring a stronger, more representative government. Meanwhile, the city is violent and dangerous.
McClatchy reports political violence in Iraq on Sunday:
' Baghdad
- A roadside bomb detonated in Nidhal street near a restaurant in Karrada neighborhood ( downtown Baghdad)around noon. Three people were wounded.
- A roadside bomb detonated in Beirut intersection in Palestine street (east Baghdad) around 7 p.m. Seven people were wounded.
- A roadside bomb detonated in Mansour neighborhood (west Baghdad) near the Mr. Milky market around 7:30 p.m. Seven people were wounded.
Mosul
- Gunmen opened fire on the dean of the college of medicine Muzahim Al-Khayatt in Shifaa neighborhood (west Mosul). Muzahim had two bullets one in the abdomen and the other was in his leg. His situation is stable and he is in hospital for recovery.'
posted by Juan Cole @ 12/15/2008 12:34:00 AM
|
Facebook
18 Comments:
This interview with Maj. Gen. Mark P. Hertling, the 1st Armored Division commander, who has been in Samarra, is refreshing for its candor even as the general rightly stresses the improvements in the security situation.
Where was the candour? He was only saying the same things that US commanders have been saying since 2004.
Bush and Cheney may pardon each other Jan 19 for the atrocity that has been the US war on Iraq, and the matter will be dropped overnight by the mainstream press in America. I predict that there future will include very few trips outside the US, out of fear that they will be arrested and prosecuted for war crimes against Iraqis, even though their crimes against the US are just as serious.
The shoes should sue the reporter for soiling them by Bush and Maliki.
Bush's lack of principles showed up again. After meeting the Iraqi "leaders", he took aside his main Iraqi whore, Hakim and Barazani aside and held separate closed meetings with each of them.
But Bush is a dead duck, Hakim's power will vanish in a couple of months and Barazani and Talabani will soon find themselves back in their gheto of Kurdish mountains.
Good riddance.
A very sad scene. War criminal George W. Bush making jokes after an outburst of rage and dignity of a broken journalist from a ravaged country.
Hertling and other soldiers view the war through the prism of "mission"; it is a very narrow focus.
Apocryphal stories of welcoming behavior among the citizenry compete with, well, shoe-throwing.
I have been to Iraq three times. The idea that Iraqis will love us after our invasion/occupation/nation-building stint is incredible on its face.
I will allow that we have developed a certain constituency. My own view is that this constituency will either disappear or end up residing in Dearborn sometime in the next five years. The other Iraqis hate our guts, and the fruits of this poisonous relationship will ripen over the same time period.
Strictly speaking, the shoe thrower assaulted a visiting Head of State. As such, he should be tried in a court of law.
Stepping away from the inanity of affording W the respect due a visiting Head of State, one observes that W is a dufus who allowed his cronies to murder how many, a hundred thousand Iraqis? More?
Strictly speaking, Dufus should be tried as a war criminal, and if he is not, then neither should Muntazir al-Zaidi be held accountable for his justifiable outrage.
If this is not possible, then perhaps we could all agree to refer to Muntazir al-Zaidi as "The Righteous One," and to Dufus as, well, "Dufus." Forevermore.
Gaza families eat grass as Israel locks border
AS a convoy of blue-and-white United Nations trucks loaded with food waited last night for Israeli permission to enter Gaza, Jindiya Abu Amra and her 12-year-old daughter went scrounging for the wild grass their family now lives on.
“We had one meal today - khobbeizeh,” said Abu Amra, 43, showing the leaves of a plant that grows along the streets of Gaza.
“I can’t remember seeing a fruit,” said Rabab, 12, who goes with her mother most mornings to scavenge.
Israel controls the borders and allows in humanitarian supplies only sporadically.
“The economy has been crushed and there are no imports or exports,” said John Ging, director of its [the UN's] relief and works agency.
He has four days of food in stock for distribution to the most desperate - and no idea whether Israel will reopen the border. The Abu Amra family may have to eat wild grass for the foreseeable future.
Some folks complained anonymously that Juan Cole should not allow me to post such "irrelevant" information in his comments section.
Some times he does and sometimes he doesn't.
It was very satisfying to see shoes thrown at Bush. Maybe we need a line of nerf shoes or crocs, designed for throwing at world leaders and politicians of all kinds.
Still, as you know too well, had the man thrown his shoes at Saddam Hussein, he would have been beaten to death. It's a complicated world.
Bush has always said that the Iraqis should offer thanks for his liberating them. He just got an appropriate thank you.
Hopefully the shoe thrower is getting pats on the back and having tea at the police station.
It looks like the shoe incident is costing the Americans some serious bribery cash.
The cotributors to the (Arabic)
http://www.sotaliraq.com/news.php
are normally critical of Maliki's government and of the occupation.
But today's edition is wall-to-wall praise for Bush, and insults for the "Ba'thist" reporter who launched the shoes attack.
One of them, Mohammad Othman, described Bush as "noble and magnificent". Enjoy.
It's also been reported that he was abducted in the past by a Shiite milita while entering Baghdad, and released 3 days later. Supposedly it garnered news coverage, so he's been mentioned in Arabic press before.
I saw a news report that claimed he was detained by the US forces twice. All of that, getting detained by a militia and then twice by the US would infuriate me. I don't blame him much.
It's impressive that he's become an overnight hero in Iraq, with spontaneous-looking rallies calling for his release. I guess he's like an Iraqi version of Joe the Plumber, except he actually tried to do something.
Re ongoing Iraq war coverage;
It aint over. It's more than possible that the worst of it aint over. I wish it were not so.
One of the things that continues to frustrate me is the shotgun reportage of violence, largely without any information as to who is hitting at who.
More often than not, the general alignment of the attackers and the victims is known by Iraqis, MNFI, and the local news bureaus. But instead of giving any who-hit-who information to us, the US news leaves me to guess or ferret out that Karada is a divided Sunni-Shiite battleground neighborhood E. of the River. Was the 'nearby' restaurant an economic target, or a gathering point for police? Is 'insurgent' descriptive of Sunni or Sadrist attackers?
If the nature of an attack is unknown or info is especially unreliable (a criminal shakedown or hit?), the lack of candor or intel becomes a fact in itself, and should be reported.
This interactive BBC map of Baghdad is rough and somewhat dated, but it names neighborhoods and colors in the radical 'beruitization' of Baghdad between 2003 and late 2006. Before the US built the walls and allowed Sawa Sunni fighters back in, to hold their remaining turf.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/shared/spl/hi/in_depth/baghdad_navigator/
If the many local truces hold, it will be even more amazing than 'ceasefire in place' arrangements achieved over the last two years.
Incorporating 10% of Sawa or Sadrists into IA/IP gov't formations seems less important to me than the withdrawal of US forces from Baghdad by June '09. Petraeus nightmare is the groundwork being laid for a rearmed resumption. The walls will do almost nothing to stop mortar bombs.
The Sunni and their Western allies are for sure stockpiling heavy weapons for a renewed battle for W. Baghdad. Just as the Sadrists and Fadhil are preparing to coopt or roll Hakim/Maliki forces out of their strongholds, after the Provincial elections and US change of gov't.
The 1000 US soldiers killed during the 2007 'surge' (and the multiples of Iraqi casualties that should be projected from that number) was a tactical delay of the processes and outcomes unleashed by Bush's war.
Now Iraqis wait for the other shoe to drop.
Note that Maliki didn't even flinch. He knew where that shoe was headed.
Juan, throwing shoes to a guest is not islamic teaching. you can check it here
A million shoe march on D.C.!!!
Just wish to mention that throwing things at persons in positions of power is nothing new: already in 1637 (to be precise, on Sunday 23 July 1637) Jenny Geddes threw her stool at the head of Bishop David Lindsay at St. Giles' Cathedral in Edinburgh, Scotland, when the latter began to read from the new Book of Common Prayer (following the imposition by Charles I of England of Anglican services on the Church of Scotland). According to legend, Jenny Geddes' action "sparked the riot which led to the Wars of the Three Kingdoms, which included the English Civil War". Jenny Geddes is reported to have accompanied her hurling of her stool with the following words:
"Devil cause you severe pains in your abdomen, false thief: dare you say the Mass in my ear?" (Translation)
BF.
"throwing shoes to a guest is not islamic teaching."
With all respect, Bush was not a guest.
Bush was not a guest of the Iraqi people but of the Emerald City Iraqis, the successors in every way of Nuri as-Said, who sold out his country to the British. Maliki no doubt owed Bush hospitality, but the Iraqi people owed Bush and his brutal empire an appropriate kissoff.
Good start.
And the guy acted in the midst of Malikis' hard boys, knowing that he would be badly beat up, propbably tortured, and likely enough murdered. The man has true grit.
All rise.
Post a Comment
<< Home