Shoe-Tosser a Celebrity in Arab World
The Iraqi TV reporter who threw his shoes at George W. Bush yesterday is rather predictably being hailed as a hero by the Arab world.
Newspapers across the Arab world printed front-page photos of Bush ducking the flying shoes, and satellite TV stations repeatedly aired the incident, which was hailed by the president’s many critics in the region. …
Wafa Khayat, 48, a doctor in the West Bank town of Nablus, called the attack “a message to Bush and all the U.S. policy makers that they have to stop killing and humiliating people.” …
Al-Jazeera television interviewed Saddam’s former chief lawyer Khalil al-Dulaimi, who offered to defend al-Zeidi, calling him a “hero.”
In Baghdad’s Shiite slum of Sadr City, thousands of supporters of radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr burned American flags to protest against Bush and call for the release of al-Zeidi. “Bush, Bush, listen well: Two shoes on your head,” the protesters chanted.
Of course, anyone who tried such a thing with Saddam Hussein would have been tortured, murdered, and dumped into a mass grave.
Frank says: