A surprise visit by US President George Bush to Iraq has been overshadowed by an incident in which two shoes were thrown at him during a news conference.
In the end, the Iraqi people did not bid farewell to U.S. President George W. Bush with gratitude or wreaths of victory. Instead an individual, unarmed Iraqi threw shoes at him, a traditional demonstration of anger and contempt.
Iraqi cameraman Muntadar al-Zaidi was frisked for any lethal weapons before entering Bush's presence Sunday, but he used his shoes — the traditional sign of contempt throughout the Arab world — to humiliate Bush by throwing both of them at him. The American leader who wanted to be remembered as the liberator of Baghdad from the tyranny of Saddam Hussein will instead go into history immortalized on video by ducking to avoid two shoes thrown at him with shouts of "dog." Zaidi works for the Cairo-based al-Baghdadiya television channel. Popular demonstrations have erupted all over Iraq in support of him.
Once again, Bush was taken by surprise by a form of behavior and popular attitudes toward himself that are commonplace and universal across the Arab world. People across Iraq and the Arab world have been throwing shoes at images of Bush for years. His Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has even been nicknamed Kundara — or "shoe" — a play on her first name.
The US president has now continued to Afghanistan to inspect troops there.
He arrived before dawn at Bagram air force base, and is due to hold talks with President Hamid Karzai.
Bush was obsessed with Iraq and neglected Afghanistan for years in his efforts to build a stable, pro-American Shiite-led democracy in Iraq. Yet the first thing the democratically elected, Shiite-dominated government in Baghdad did, once it could stand on its own feet, was to push relentlessly for the United States to withdraw all its combat forces from Iraq.
Bush's last act in office was to sign a Status of Forces Agreement with the government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki that made official the policy the U.S. president opposed throughout the four and a half years that American forces occupied Iraq during his presidency — getting out of the country as quickly as possible.
'Size 10'
In the middle of the news conference with 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."
Mr Zaidi, a correspondent for Cairo-based al-Baghdadiya TV, was then wrestled to the ground by security personnel and hauled away.
"If you want the facts, it's a size 10 shoe that he threw," Mr Bush joked afterwards.
Al-Baghdadiya's bureau chief told the Associated Press that he had no idea what prompted Mr Zaidi to attack President Bush, although reports say he was once kidnapped by a militia and beaten up.
"I am trying to reach Muntadar since the incident, but in vain," said Fityan Mohammed. "His phone is switched off."
Correspondents said the attack was symbolic. Iraqis threw shoes and used them to beat Saddam Hussein's statue after his overthrow.
American security'
Mr Bush's first stop upon arriving in Baghdad was the Iraqi presidential palace in the heavily-fortified Green Zone, where he held talks with President Jalal Talabani.
"The work hasn't been easy but it's been necessary for American security, Iraqi hope and world peace," Mr Bush said during his talks with Mr Talabani.
The Iraqi president called Mr Bush "a great friend for the Iraqi people, who helped us liberate our country".
The BBC's Humphrey Hawksley, in Baghdad, says the key issue at present is exactly how American troops will withdraw within the next three years and what sort of Iraq they will leave behind.
The US media has just published details of a US government report saying that post invasion reconstruction of Iraq was crippled by bureaucratic turf wars and an ignorance of the basic elements of Iraqi society.
The report is circulating among US officials in draft form, says the New York Times.
It reveals details of a reconstruction effort that cost more than $100bn (£67bn) and only succeeded in restoring what was destroyed in the invasion and the widespread looting that followed it, the newspaper said.
Bush partisans maintain he will leave behind a democratic Iraq free of the terror of Saddam Hussein. But the government he leaves behind is far closer to neighboring Iran than Saddam ever was.
At least 300,000 Iraqis died violently in the war to topple Saddam, the chaos of Bush's bungled occupation policies, and the fierce Sunni Muslim insurgency and civil war that followed. Some estimates go well above a half-million. A total of 300,000 Iraqis died during the 24 years of Saddam's dictatorship — a death rate only one-quarter as bad as the one that occurred under Bush's occupation and policies.
On Monday Bush flew from Iraq to Afghanistan. There was another grim, unintended symbolism to that visit, too. He had to fly by helicopter from a U.S. Army base to the capital, Kabul, because neither U.S. forces nor the Afghan government could maintain overland security.
