Iraqi Journalist Throws Shoes At Bush..Misses

skeptigirl said:
There have been a number of surveys, and there are hundreds of interviews with actual Iraqis as opposed to the barrage of pundit opinions in the mainstream news. Here are some examples noted by CommonDreams of specific news articles that ignored Iraqi public opinion in favor of their own versions of reality:

As Usual, NYT Ignores Iraqi Opinion - Anecdotes trump polls on withdrawal
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For a minute there, I figured you actually had a completely redoubtable unbiased news source, but it is just the liberal newswire CommonDreams that feature opinions from Deepak Chopra, Alfie Kohn, Frank Rich, Michael Moore and Robert Redford.

BTW: Obama's Iraqi policy is not much different from Bush's. I wonder how CommonDreams will cover what happens in Iraq under the Obama Administration?
 
Here are a couple links to a myriad of polls and a discussion paper on the validity of polling given the circumstances in Iraq:

Multiple links to polls done in Iraq from 2004-2008

Opinion Polls in Iraq

Measuring opinion in a ‘war zone’ - What Iraqi’s really think From a summary of the paper:
The paper will show:-

• how, within three years and with genuine risks to his life, a man has built up a nationwide field force, a network of regional supervisors and a busy head office…. all motivated by the belief that accurate opinion research can be a force for good.

• the challenges and practical solutions to establishing a research agency in the most difficult of circumstances. It will outline the immense detail that goes into establishing sampling frames, ensuring that various ethnic/religious groups are considered and that – as far as interviewer safety allows - as many locations as possible are covered.

• how meeting such challenges calls for exceptional determination, bravery and belief in the power of public opinion

• why organisations conduct tracking polls and the strategic insights they learn from them.

• what the people of Iraq really think. The paper will reveal what Iraqi’s feel about the security situation, about the occupying forces and how life today compares to that under Saddam. Tracking data reveals the highs and the lows of public opinion and the impact various events have had on the views of ordinary Iraqi’s.
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Cicero said:
For a minute there, I figured you actually had a completely redoubtable unbiased news source, but it is just the liberal newswire CommonDreams that feature opinions from Deepak Chopra, Alfie Kohn, Frank Rich, Michael Moore and Robert Redford.
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Care to actually address the material in the CommonDreams link rather than this excuse for an argument? The specific news stories and documentation of the facts which contradict the news accounts is spelled out for you in multiple cases. And all you can do is whine about irrelevant stories CommonDreams also writes about.

Cicero said:
BTW: Obama's Iraqi policy is not much different from Bush's. I wonder how CommonDreams will cover what happens in Iraq under the Obama Administration?
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OM-FSM! Cicero, you've actually posted something I agree with.
 
skeptigirl said:
OM-FSM! Cicero, you've actually posted something I agree with.
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Standing by for the Rapture in 3, 2, 1. ;)

OK, Iraq of today is still a place broken undergoing a bizarre sequence of repairs. How long it takes to fix it up, if it can be fixed up (my money on the long term is Kurds break away) is anyone's guess. The prime virtue of Iraq under Saddam was stability, which autocrats do pretty well. The nostalgia for that makes a lot of sense, given five years of civil war of varying intensity since he left the building.

The current present virtue is that autocracy has been replaced by something more like a republican/parliamentary form of government, and all that goes with it, with the singularly vexing problem of the transition being soaked in blood.

At the moment, there's a lot of churn and downside to that new virtue. No further comment on the desireability of change, since any Iraqi might be frustrated that the time and choosing of transition was not their own ... though for some, I am guessing a few, it was.

Change can be rough. This change has been really rough. Again, over a million fled the country, and about that number internally displaced. In America, that translates to about 12 million fled the country, and 12 million forced to move: Katrina times forty.

Some of us would be irritated as well, eh? There might even have been some gunplay involved.

DR
 
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The question then becomes whether the violence associated with splitting the country between the Kurds and possibly between the Sunnis and the Shias be less than the violence that would occur trying to keep them together and who gets to make the decision?
 
Tin Foil Timothy said:
Yeah yeah of course you have. What did you do? Give them some Freedom Fries.
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Again, the pathetic accusations say it all about you pal.

Get out of your house. Travel the world. Look at it with unbiased and less bitter eyes.

Take the blinkers off.

Stop snipping posts to enable you to take them out of context.

Have you been to the Middle East?
 
Muntazer al-Zaidi wants Bush to pardon him. Ole Munt rails aginst American occupation and interference in Iraqi politics, but he wouldn't mind if the American President tells an autonomous Iraqi government what to do in this case.

This reminds me of Sirhan Sirhan protesting that if RFK were alive, he would be in favor of his parole:

***..I sincerely believe that if Robert Kennedy were alive today, I believe he would not countenance singling me out for this kind of treatment. I think he would be among the first to say that, however horrible the deed I committed 14 years ago was, that it should not be the cause for denying me equal treatment under the laws of this country."..***

Too bad for Sirhan he killed the one guy who was sympathetic to his plight.
 
Cicero said:
Muntazer al-Zaidi wants Bush to pardon him.
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Bush can't, maybe Maliki can. Pardon is a legal issue in Iraq on this matter, not within Bush's presidential jurisdiction.

Bush can forgive him, however, if he so wishes. Might be a Christian thing to do.

Apropos of nothing other than the general topic of this thread: (originally posted in Puzzles/Limericks)

As we kiss our dear leader goodbye
We shall duck when Iraqi shoes fly
Then raise glasses and cheer
The libation? Busch beer
So we'll all get quite wet with eyes dry

As to Sirhan Sirhan: aye.

DR
 
Darth Rotor said:
Bush can forgive him, however, if he so wishes. Might be a Christian thing to do.
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I've seen a few minutes of a news segments where Bush, quite wittingly actually, says, first, that he wasn't personally insulted (which seems to imply he'd forgiven the shoe-thrower) and, second, it wasn't too bad compared to all the other stuff people slinged at him during his presidency...

(Bush, though nobody would have imagined it, seems to be one of the presidents with the wittier sense of humor, when he's in the mood for a joke. Go figure.)
 
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funk de fino said:
Again, the pathetic accusations say it all about you pal.

Get out of your house. Travel the world. Look at it with unbiased and less bitter eyes.

Take the blinkers off.

Stop snipping posts to enable you to take them out of context.

Have you been to the Middle East?
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Yes I have numerous times. And beyond. I didn't travel to these places to kill people though.

I don't feel I have to proclaim such in a forum to add weight to an argument

Your posts say more about you than your arguments. Perhaps it makes you feel superior to assume that no one else has had the experiences you have?

Enjoy your Freedom Fries.
 
Skeptic said:
I've seen a few minutes of a news segments where Bush, quite wittingly actually, says, first, that he wasn't personally insulted (which seems to imply he'd forgiven the shoe-thrower) and, second, it wasn't too bad compared to all the other stuff people slinged at him during his presidency...

(Bush, though nobody would have imagined it, seems to be one of the presidents with the wittier sense of humor, when he's in the mood for a joke. Go figure.)
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Well you have to have a sense of humor to believe that Iraq was invaded on the basis Freedom and democracy. I bet they thought that if they named the murderous invasion Operation Freedom everybody would believe them. And some even did. :jaw-dropp !! :D :D
 
 
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skeptigirl said:
Thousands protest for release of Iraqi journalist

Iraq rally for Bush shoe attacker

In Iraqi’s Shoe-Hurling Protest, Arabs Find a Hero. (It’s Not Bush.)

Thousands of Iraqis protest arrest of shoe-throwing journalist

Montrealers are being invited to hurl their footwear at the U.S. Consulate on Saturday in solidarity with an Iraqi journalist who threw his shoes at President George W. Bush this week.


Not trying to cherry pick, mind you, but I couldn't find more than a blog comment or reply supporting Bush.
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What did Bush do during the press conference that would require a solicitation of support? All he did was easily maneuver out of the way of two shoes thrown from 10 feet away by a Saddam supporter. You can find Saddam supporters in the U.S. and even in the JREFer forums.
 
What is the expected ground temperatur in Montreal on saturday?

You don´t need a major trial to give the guy a fine and some community service.
Guess he could get his own tv-show afterwoods.
 
Are you sure he was a Sadam supporter and not just a Bush hater, the later are much more common.
 
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