Float Like a Butterfly
President Bush proved today that he has better moves than my starting fantasy football running back did this week.
See here. You HAVE to click the video link- it's definitely worth it.
Bush's response?
Aside: Let's hope Secret Service wises up a bit. People may not like the guy, but he's still the President and deserves a little better protection (as we'd hope the service would provide for the guy that's about to take his place).
See here. You HAVE to click the video link- it's definitely worth it.
Bush's response?
"So what if the guy threw his shoe at me?" Bush told a reporter in response to a question about the incident.Have to hand it to the guy: that "not gesturing with all five fingers" bit is pretty good. I may use that one myself in the future...
"Let me talk about the guy throwing his shoe. It's one way to gain attention. It's like going to a political rally and having people yell at you. It's like driving down the street and having people not gesturing with all five fingers.
"It's a way for people to draw attention. I don't know what the guy's cause is. But one thing is for certain. He caused you to ask me a question about it. I didn't feel the least bit threatened by it."
Aside: Let's hope Secret Service wises up a bit. People may not like the guy, but he's still the President and deserves a little better protection (as we'd hope the service would provide for the guy that's about to take his place).
posted by tj at 3:10 PM
48 Comments:
I have to admit, I'm impressed by both the accuracy of that throw and by the President's skillful dodge.
Second 4:46. The Prez is quick. So was the thrower -- he fired off with both shoes within seconds!
Didn't they screen the guy before hand? How could they have missed his shoes?
I third 3:46 - maybe it's skills he picked up as head cheerleader in his prior life?
Oh god now they're going to make you take off your shoes before all press conferences.
First the shoe bomber, now the shoe thrower.
(seriously, though. why didn't the secret service people tackle POTUS and drag him out of there, like always happens in the movies? They whole thing felt ... kinda amateur)
This is pure speculation, but I'm guessing the response protocol is different for flying shoes than it is for flying grenades. Just a thought...
one might hope they would react a little quicker if _anything_ was thrown at the president's head.
I agree - where was the SS? I mean a bullet would have traveled much faster? Where was the SS agent there to take it for POTUS?
I think the Secret Service acted pretty fast in that. Look closely at the video.
1. Everyone in the room almost certainly was heavily screened for weapons. Shoes aren't usually considered a prohibited item, even when meeting POTUS.
2. Press conferences are one of the few times in which SS agents are purposely "away" from POTUS. Obviously a highly secured room requires less immediate security than another location. But they streamed in pretty quick.
3. Look at the first SS to react. (The guy who looks a little like John S--le.) He starts to move to the thrower, determines he's not a serious threat, and goes straight to the principal (POTUS). He checks Bush's status, who assures him he's fine (with a pat on the arm).
4. Meanwhile, other SS handlers stream in through a back door, filling the space between POTUS and everyone else. The thrower is tackled by mid- and rear-room security (mostly Iraqi security). The SS keep an eye on the rest of the crowd--seemingly ready to grab POTUS and drag him throw the rear door.
All in all, I think they did pretty well. Again, the scenario would have been different if POTUS wasn't already in a high security bubble.
Nice to know those all those years of evasion served him in good stead when the shoe was dropped... err... flung.
I really encourage everyone to listen to the podcast of a NY Times reporter at the scene. I particularly liked these two quotes:
"George Bush looks like he was totally experienced about these things, because the guy avoid[ed] one of the shoes." [Because we can and do throw shoes at GWB all the time.]
"I mean, this guy [GWB] is like the unluckiest guy I ever knew. Because he started his whole [presidency] with 9-11, and now he ended his time with two shoes!"
Though just an aside: this may seem like a light-hearted thing. But I wouldn't want to be that shoe-thrower now. Iraqis (not just him) will likely be arrested and/or assaulted as a result of this.
Link: http://baghdadbureau.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/12/14/podcast-an-account-of-the-shoe-throwing-incident/
His advisers must have done a piss poor job of emphasizing that he cannotsay Jehova.
"Iraqis (not just him) will likely be arrested and/or assaulted as a result of this."
"Likely?" Really? Can we just say that without any evidence? Have things gotten that bad?
Dan--How naive are you? They've always been that bad. But you don't need to take my word for it. Listen to the podcast. The NY Times journalist said that the shoe-thrower was being beaten as he was taken out of the room, and that it seemed a cloth was shoved into his mouth to prevent him from yelling. The podcaster also said that Iraqi security forces were threatening the other journalists, even though they clearly weren't throwing shoes.
From CNN.com's featured article description:
"A man identified as an Iraqi journalist threw shoes at -- but missed -- President Bush during a news conference Sunday evening in Baghdad, where Bush was making a farewell visit. In Arab culture, throwing shoes at someone ... is considered an insult."
I didn't realize that shoe-hurling was only insulting in "Arab culture". Reading that, I felt like the author assumed I was 5.
Carbolic: and in Saddam's regime, he'd have been dead within minutes. Gunshot to the head does wonders in dealing with the media in his day.
Improvements are incremental.
interesting before and after:
http://uchicagolaw.typepad.com/faculty/2008/11/the-iraq-war-a.html
Carbolic, I still don't see any hard evidence that just random Iraqis will be beaten over what this guy did. I'm not naive enough to seriously doubt it, but I still think you should have a little more to back up a statement like that.
Toney, in America, we consider shoe throwing a great compliment. That's why I will never throw my shoes at you.
Interesting post 7:28. I have the feeling, however, that the feeling of whether the war was a good or bad thing will rest more on partisan affiliation than with actual analysis of conditions in Iraq.
And that's funny to me- mostly because it seems that the majority of elected officials in BOTH parties recognize that people are better off in Iraq now than before the war.
I guess I'm not saying that Bush was anything but an awful president. But I AM saying that there's a possibility that his legacy shouldn't be crafted as bad as it's written right now.
We'll see I suppose.
Another gratuitous movie reference. And that sort of brings me to a related point of the emotional reaction I'm having. I feel like I should be pissed off that someone threw a shoe at MY president, but I'm sort of not. I'm cracking jokes about it, and shrugging my shoulders. Why?
Carbolic,
I'm pretty sure that this guy is in deep shit. But why are other people going to get beat up over it?
My overall impression is that this guy was an idiot, because assault on the president is likely going to get you a rather stiff penalty. AND he missed.
And Armen, I don't think even Bush is that pissed off. Sad maybe.
Armen, my reaction is the same. I think the main reason is that the President seemed to enjoy it.
A second reason has to do with last few seconds of the podcast Carbolic posted above. The narrator says something to like, "Bush has to be the unluckiest guy alive. His Presidency begins with 9/11, and ends it with people throwing shoes."
How can you NOT shrug your shoulders at that?
The Patriot in me is pretty pissed off about it. But the bleeding heart in me says "things are significantly worse for the people over there than they were before", and can kind of understand.
Hundreds of thousands of Iraqis dead, millions displaced, etc. vs. ducking a shoe?
This is one of those situations where I'm willing to just try to push it from my memory in view of the (hopefully) sunnier days ahead.
You really think it was BETTER when saddam was exterminating villages?
I agree with 12:09, Toney. Clearly your assessment has more to do with a desire to be a "bleeding heart / anti-Bush" than it does on any actual facts.
You can be anti-Bush and still realize that the world (with a particular emphasis on the people in Iraq) is much better off without Saddam in power. He may not have been the threat he was trumped up to be to justify the war, but he still committed war crimes in the 70s/80s and genocide for generations. He still plotted to have assassins kill GHWB - your former president (like him or not) - well after the Gulf War was over.
I think it was more stable, yes. And I think less people died.
Now, I'm not saying it was better. tens of thousands dead under a tyrannical oppression vs. hundreds of thousands dead under a "free" but ungovernable state? I'm not going to make that call. But I can understand the frustrations - aren't "liberations" supposed to result in a safer environment?
TJ - you keep talking about the "facts".
There are two I would like to present, though I haven't bothered to look for support for the first.
1. It is generally well accepted that fewer Iraqi people died (per time unit) during Saddam's regime than after. This is entirely (in my opinion) the fault of Bush for disbanding the Iraqi army, which was our only chance of maintaining any sort of stability.
2. Way fewer Americans died. In fact, none. Now, you can do your own "factual" assessment, but our soldiers lives are far too precious to me to to have their deaths justified by the execution of the war and the current state of Iraq.
It's no secret that I think a lazy iguana could have run the war better, but I think you have to really stretch the facts to say things over there are "better". It would probably be best to poll the Iraqis to see what they think. Do they feel safer? I would guess not.
It would be silly to compare deaths before the war to those during the war.
The question is whether, as a result of those deaths / war, the country be better without Saddam.
I don't think that's a tough one to have to argue. He was a brutal dictator. Short of another brutal dictator, it can only [likely] be better.
Whether we should have gotten into the war in the first place was really never put up to debate here.
*[will be better]
TJ, isn't that a bit arrogant and completely unhinged from reality? How exactly is the average Iraqi better off? No, moving their system of government marginally closer to intangible principles of western liberal democracy does not count.
great. now in addition to having to take off our shoes at the airport we will have to throw them. any sign of even the remotest hand-eye coordination and we don't get them back.
Eric Posner's stats argue that during the period of economic sanctions under Saddam, there were far more deaths of children than today. So I'm not sure it helps to say that everyone agrees there are more deaths today than during Saddam.
No, Armen. In fact, I believe it to be demeaning for one to imply that principles involving freedoms are inherently western concepts. Everyone deserves them.
TJ - freedom is reletive. Under Saddam, people may not have had the freedom to vote, but perhaps they were free from the fear of death that most in Iraq have today.
My point is, I don't think either of us are qualified to say whether or not people there are better off. Just because you would choose "give me liberty or give me death" doesn't mean they would. You should ask Iraqi's how they feel, and since their pro-American government just voted us out in the near future, I would say they might feel differently.
Under Saddam, people may not have had the freedom to vote, but perhaps they were free from the fear of death that most in Iraq have today.
Kurds and Shiites now face the fear of death that they did not under Saddam?
Putting aside the awkward phrasing of the above comment, I believe Toney's point (though he can speak for himself) is that Iraqis are not as clearly better off now as TJ would like us to believe. To that end, you can ask the Shiites who have been gunned down or blown up by Sunni death squads how they feel about their freedom. Or maybe you can ask the Shiites marching for the journalist's freedom.
I'm still perplexed why this is even a matter of debate. We f*cked up the occupation. During the past 4.75 out of 5 years, almost no one led a "normal life." Even the Kurds, who have escaped relatively unharmed, have had to deal with increased Turkish assaults and of course tensions in Kirkuk. This is eerily similar to the sentiments expressed by some even to this day following the collapse of the Soviet Union: yeah it sucked to be denied basic human rights, but at least I had predictability and a daily routine. This is a powerful human emotion and need. One that the US neglected.
The assumption implied in 7:30's comment and TJ is that this is a zero-sum game of either accepting the present situation or Saddam. Well no. The point is that we mucked things up so badly, that it's no longer so clear to the Iraqis that they are better off without Saddam...something that was glaringly apparent to me in April 2003 when US forces were refusing to arrest, detain, or do anything about rampant crime. We certainly could have done things differently, and the unquestionable benefits of removing Saddam would have been glaringly apparent to all Iraqis.
Armen- we agree on one thing- the occupation has not been well managed.
Putting aside the hell I'm sure everyone has suffered, I'm still having a hard time believing that in your heart of hearts you don't know that the future prospects for the average Iraqi brightened the day Saddam was toppled. Regardless of what hell the near future brought.
Toney: I agree that freedom is relative. But I believe you're mistaken as to how "free" people were under Saddam. There may have been less outward violence (which is a huge assumption I'm granting you), but you're forgetting that it was fear of death that was repressing it.
or torture, or your family's death, etc.
If somebody wants to read a awesome book on an Iraqi prospective of the war, I recommend checking out Howling in Mesopotamia. I read it over the summer and it was a great read. Written by a law professor in America (I forget which school) who was from Iraq and had family there. Shortly after the war started he moved back to Iraq and gives his perspective. Really easy read but really informative.
Toney, I disagree with your assessment about Iraq under Saddamm. After reading several books, including the one I just mentioned, a lot of people were afraid of death. For example, the Professor who wrote the book had many family members killed at the hand of Saddam.
I don't think anybody who truly thinks people were better off under Saddam are very well studied on Iraqi history. Their pretty much just talking their politics and letting that interfere with a clear look at facts and history.
Listen, I want to make myself very clear on this point. I realize it's easy to misconstrue perspectives and opinions in the comment sections of blog posts, so hopefully this will clarify.
I did not and am not saying things were better when Saddam was in power. I did say they were more stable, which I think everyone can agree. And I do think less people died (at least, I'm fairly certain, though am open to hard data saying otherwise).
But it is absolutely asinine to assume that things are better now. There is a genuine fear there now. Of course there was fear before, but did it strike as close to home for the average Iraqi as getting blown up in the neighborhood supermarket? Note that I'm not saying people were more or less afraid than they are now.
My point is this: none of us are in a position to decide whether or not things are better over there. I realize that it's difficult to even comprehend that maybe some Iraqis think they were better off before, and I realize that this is because we equate that with American failure, or with the failure of democratic values. But this decision isn't ours to make.
Why are we arguing about whether it is better now? Iraq will stabilize into something better than it is now. Even if it regresses into a dictatorship again, it will be better than now.
But we, even though it has been poorly done, have given the country a chance to be a democracy. If Iraq becomes "free" then I would hazard a guess that they will say that THEY are better off than their parents, who went through what I can only imagine is hell on earth.
So Toney, while I think that the current conditions are harsher in some ways now than they were, it is rather simplistic to say that we have made the country "worse."
I'm sure that quite a few Americans thought the revolutionary war sucked balls while it was going on. We turned out pretty well.
Toney, I am interested to know what you are basing your views off of? What is your basis for knowing what the average Iraqi feels? Having Saddam pull your uncle out of your home in the middle of the night doesn't strike close to home?
Hundreds of Thousands of people are known to have died at the hands of Saddam. That doesn't include the amount tortured, raped, etc.
I find it asinine that people put their politics above anything else.
So Toney, while I think that the current conditions are harsher in some ways now than they were, it is rather simplistic to say that we have made the country "worse."
And I'm not saying it is. And a "chance at democracy" wasn't the point of the war in the first place, so it was hardly our place to "give" it to the Iraqis.
I actually worry the most about them slipping back into another despotism. If they do, you can hardly say they are "better off" than they were now, since they would have been best off without the whole Iraq war in the first place in such a situation.
Anyway, don't just assume that there's near-universal accord in Iraq about their well-being, relative to the Saddam days. Like Armen said, this isn't black or white.
ugh, instead of talking about Iraq can't we talk about what we're doing for the holidays??
Finals are over! its time to celebrate.
I think "Iraq was better or worse off under Saddam" is a particularly dumb line of conversation, so I haven't been participating in it. Thanks for wasting everyone's time, TJ!
But just to respond to Dan's 9:53 post. BBC is reporting that the shoe-thrower has been beaten in custody, with broken ribs, a broken arm, and general bruises. He's being held by Iraqi security forces under the control of Iraq's national security adviser, but is not currently charged.
Given the journalist's newfound international fame/notoriety, he probably won't be permanently harmed. Still, I wouldn't want to be in his ... wait, did he ever get his shoes back?
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