Reporter Throws Shoes at President Bush

[Dezzimal]

Now its really dead.

http://bushdodgeseverything.ytmnd.com/

[Beckwin]

Democracy hurts.

birth pangs, man, just birth pangs.

stay the course.

[Kaylia]

Personally, he broke the law. Even though there is infinite hypocrisy everywhere in Iraq, before, during and will be after Bush and co., the law is the law.

There is a context behind every crimes, and you can't apply laws without taking it in consideration.

Also, in this particular case, there is a message to pass to people who opposes the current government. I'm not sure they are sending the right one by sending him to jail for 10 years.

[Elvis]

Which is why the next sentence of my post said he shouldn't get a long jail sentence (one of the Times articles stated the minimum sentence would be 2 years which I think is very harsh). And my moral judgment (as opposed to the legal one) is that I personally don't care if a truckload of shoes drop on Bush.

[Lavik]

http://i30.photobucket.com/albums/c3...bushmatriz.gif

[Elvis]

Necro-bump:

Muntadhar al-Zeidi, the Iraqi journalist who threw his shoes at George Bush, the former US president, has been released from jail.

Citing revenge for the suffering of Iraqis during the US invasion as his motivation, and pledging to use his new-found status to promote humanitarian causes, al-Zeidi on Tuesday gave a news conference in Baghdad, the Iraqi capital, to give his side of the story.

[Qalbert]

in unrelated news Iraq has begun construction on a 500:1 model of a shoe

[Kuya]

Iraq's freedoms under threat: Could a police state return? | The Economist

It doesn't seem like our adventure for democracy is quite working out:

The Shia-led government has overseen a ballooning of the country’s security apparatus. Human-rights violations are becoming more common. In private many Iraqis, especially educated ones, are asking if their country may go back to being a police state.

Old habits from Saddam Hussein’s era are becoming familiar again. Torture is routine in government detention centres. “Things are bad and getting worse, even by regional standards,” says Samer Muscati, who works for Human Rights Watch, a New York-based lobby. His outfit reports that, with American oversight gone (albeit that the Americans committed their own shameful abuses in such places as Abu Ghraib prison), Iraqi police and security people are again pulling out fingernails and beating detainees, even those who have already made confessions. A limping former prison inmate tells how he realised, after a bout of torture in a government ministry that lasted for five days, that he had been relatively lucky. When he was reunited with fellow prisoners, he said he saw that many had lost limbs and organs.

The domestic-security apparatus is at its busiest since Saddam was overthrown six years ago, especially in the capital. . . . Journalists are prominent victims of Iraq’s judicial system. In July one was arrested for photographing a Baghdad traffic jam, after his pictures were deemed "negative" for mocking Mr Maliki’s assertion that life in the capital was improving. Last year Iraq dropped to 158th place out of 173 -- its lowest ranking since the American invasion -- in a press-freedom table drawn up by Reporters Without Borders, a Paris-based lobby, which detects a decline in freedom in many countries.

The government recently announced plans to censor imported books as well as the internet, saying it wanted to ban hate screeds and pornography. But human-rights monitors fear this may presage a first step towards a wider web of censorship.

Assuming anyone ever bought the democracy excuse.

[Sepukku]

Our? You throw the United States under the bus at every chance you get. I hardly see how you can consider yourself part of us.

[kuronosan]

roflmao it's retarded to blame a loss of democratic or republic ideals on the United States.

Iraq will be Iraq, just like people will be people. The problem isn't in the idea, it's in the person.

The country will never change, no matter how many leaders you depose.

[Kuya]

Our? You throw the United States under the bus at every chance you get. I hardly see how you can consider yourself part of us.

DON'T YOU DARE CRITICIZE MY AMERICAN GOVEMANT

Anyway, i am noticing that you rarely have anything valuable to say, so i am just going to act like you don't exist. I am sure you are used to this.

[Elvis]

I'm pretty sure most people are against this war, and upon a moment's reflection have wised up to the scare-tactics that were employed to get us over there in the first place.

So yea, this is anything but 'our' war. The more I think about it, we've come a long way when you recall the millions of people who protested the war before it even took place.

@Kuya

I think he was referring to the term 'our' as if it meant the entire American people and not simply the government? I don't think most Americans like being conflated with the government's foreign policy.

[Kuya]

roflmao it's retarded to blame a loss of democratic or republic ideals on the United States.

Iraq will be Iraq, just like people will be people. The problem isn't in the idea, it's in the person.

The country will never change, no matter how many leaders you depose.

Are you saying that the iraqui people are naturally incapable of a democratic government?

edit: Elvis, you can't read. he is not saying that with the word our i'm saying that all americans wanted the war, he is saying that with the word our i seem to be including myself in it.

[Elvis]

I think the invasion and occupation have fractured the society and obviously radicalized the region. So it's definitely had an effect on the intellectual culture of Iraq.

EDIT:

@Kuya

Yea, just re-read his post. Nvm.

[Kuya]

A better predictor of whether a country will tend to have authoritarian governments is the presense of abundant and highly profitable natural resource such as oil. I'm sure there are other reasons, such as the people being used to living under a dictator or the abundant violence leading people to forego freedom in exchange for safety; a similar thing has been seen in the U.S.