Word: shoes
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Whatever the merits of the shoe thrower's anger, the unfortunate truth is that the longer we stay in Iraq, the more we will be blamed for everything that goes wrong in that country. These problems will not be fixed before we are due to depart in 2011. Or maybe ever by any outsider. The military commander in Iraq, General Ray Odierno, recently said that U.S. forces may have to stay in Iraqi cities beyond the June 2009 agreed pull-out date. I can see Odierno's point: he doesn't want to be the one who leaves behind...
...Saddam, and as incomplete as that may be, it is the best we can do, even if we were to stay in Iraq for the next hundred years. Unless we stick to the withdrawal schedule like a Swiss train, the odds go up that something like Sunday's shoe-throwing incident will cascade into a situation far beyond our control - an Iraqi Nabatiyah...
Tick-tock, tick-tock. Muntadar al-Zeidi's 15 minutes are about to run out. The Iraqi TV reporter who hurled his footwear at President Bush last week became an instant hero in the Arab world even before the second shoe dropped. But he will soon discover that the news cycle is a brutal mistress: before you know it, you're yesterday's headline...
...Iraqis in Firdos Square in 2003 raining their loafers and boots on a fallen statue of Saddam Hussein, and the other of President George W. Bush ducking flying footwear at a 2008 Baghdad press conference during the last official visit of his term. In many Eastern cultures, hurling a shoe at someone is a grave insult. Iraqi TV reporter Muntazer al-Zaidi's decision to fling his size 10s made him an instant hero to many, although some noted that it broke Arab rules of hospitality, not to mention the journalists' code of objectivity. But the sentiment behind the shoe...
...admission would have dominated the headlines: that after the debunking of Bush's original excuse for war--Saddam's weapons of mass destruction--his argument that Iraq was a crucial nexus in the global war on terrorism also held no water. Thanks to al-Zaidi, nobody heard the other shoe drop...