Clarion Content

A young Iraqi journalist at a press conference threw his shoes one after the other at George Bush the II. The Clarion Content thought it quite the fitting gesture since in the Arabic and Islamic worlds shoe throwing is a very serious insult. It compares the person being insulted to the lowest thing on earth. George Bush the II is lucky he only got that after the havoc that has been wreaked on Iraq, a country that had never attacked the United States, never supported Al-Qaeda and did not have the purported stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction that were King George's raison d'être for offensive war. As we stated in these pages recently, whatever happens to the Iraqi state after the withdrawal of United States military forces, we think its successors have a strong cause for reparations.

The incident has drawn great interest throughout Iraq and the Muslim world. Ironically the brother of the shoe throwing journalist was quoted in the A.P. saying the journalist was no more of a fan of some of the protesters than he was of America and Bush. "He hates the American physical occupation as much as he hates the Iranian moral occupation," said his brother - himself a Shia according to the BBC.

See the video of the incident along with an interesting column by former U.S. Marine Tim King in the Salem-News here. Mr. King makes several salient points including, "it is important to note that in spite of the number of Western media reports lauding the success of the military conflict, most Iraqi people do not see it that way. Most believe that their nation was functional and while seriously flawed, they were able to live for the most part, an average day-to-day life before U.S. intervention.

Since the arrival of U.S. forces, hundreds of thousands of Iraqi people have died and a large percentage of those who fight against U.S. and Coalition forces are not people who would have been considered terrorists prior to the current war there.

Most people in Iraq feel the United States has done them no favor in invading and occupying their country. Some, particularly those who work for the U.S. government, have a different view and strongly support the U.S. occupation. These citizens however will likely be in danger at some time in the future as a result of that support."

Elsewhere the leader of the Liberal Democrat party in England Nick Clegg said, "There must be a fully independent public inquiry...The death and injury of hundreds of British troops and hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians in this futile war cannot simply be swept under the carpet."

Incidentally, two of the countries King George the II and the evil Dick proclaimed as knock on benefits for the United States in the "War on Terror" were in the news this week. Libya refused to vote, abstaining in the United Nations Security Council, when a resolution urging Israel and Palestine to make peace and calling the peace process "irreversible" came up for a vote. Lebanon took delivery of 10 free upgraded
MiG-29 fighter jets from Russia. Useful. Real useful, big victories, King George, Dick, you two and your erstwhile allies are really aiding the cause of peace.

Labels: Middle East, Politics, thought, war