OK, so by now the Curious Incident Of the Shoe In The Air Time was covered from every aspect. A particuraly pissed off Iraqi journalist took off his footwear and hurled it towards Dubya who proved that a lame-duck president can still… well… duck.
However, I’m puzzled by the laxed security. I mean, there you have a roundly hated president in a clearly hostile enviroment and his Secret Service detail is in the next room?!? Not only that, it took them ages to enter the press room. Muntadar al-Zaidi, the shoe-throwing journalist had time to take of one shoe, hurl it at George W., then bend down, take off the other shoe and go for strike two, before he was wrestled to the floor and neutralised.
Not that this was a first faux pas by Bush’s bodyguards. First, there was the Pretzel Incident, which might have saved the world a lot of grief. Then there was his defiance of the laws of physics (but OK, he never studied law, plus there’s little the Secret Service could have done there) which was followed by his very own bicycle ride. But all of this was chicken-feed compared to a major security fuck-up during his visit in Georgia, when a live greade was thrown within 30 metres of him. It didn’t stop there, though. During his visit to Albania his watch was stolen from him while he was doing the ropes. And now people are hurling footwear at him during press conferences.
And these are the people who will protect the Big O. from 20 January.
If that journalist had been Iraq’s answer to Imelda Marcos, Dubya would have been dead before the Secret Service could have done anything about it. Where’s the Pretorian Guard when you need them?
Killed by the smell? 🙂
@Dr Arf: Hehehe, imagine him getting hit in the eye with a high heel 😉
@Davor: And they said there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq!
Do you think the journalist had been practicing? He seems pretty accurate for quick-fire throwing. If it wasn’t for the obvious anti-Americanism perhaps a career as a baseball picture awaits?
At the very least we’ll see shoe-hurling events introduced during London Olypmics 😉
With ex-American presidents as targets perhaps?
This is so funny, sho`em 🙂
I think the man was misunderstood completely. I am firmly convinced that he was merely trying to equip Mr. President with a shoe he could bang on a desk in the manner of Nikita Khrushchev in protest of a similarly inappropriate and misguided claim of American imperialism.
Let’s take a look at what upset Nikita back then. The head of the Filipino delegation said: “It is our view that the declaration proposed by the Soviet Union should cover the inalienable right to independence not only of the peoples and territories which yet remain under the rule of Western colonial Powers, but also of the peoples of Eastern Europe and elsewhere which have been deprived of the free exercise of their civil and political rights and which have been swallowed up, so to speak, by the Soviet Union.”