I want to see Martha Raddatz throw a shoe at him...

Ohioan -- I think that we will all be hurling shoes at him in our minds from now on. A perfect symbol to mark his failed, corrupt, tenure as President --

Maybe the whole WH press corps could start a barrage. Shoes flying everywhere...

Shoes. Chimp. Face.

My thoughts and prayers are with President Bush. It can't be easy being the worst President in history and being the exact opposite of the Christian he claims to be.

I am spending today in my workshop building a game booth for street fairs this coming summer. It will feature an effigy of Bush and a pair of throwing shoes.

Assuming President Bush didn't have a stroke or something shortly after being elected in 2000, is there any way his utter lack of intellectual depth went unnoticed by the folks around him? I mean, both Republicans and people in the media who should have had enough exposure to Bush to recognize his crippling limitations. Were they all willfully blind or did they just convince themselves it didn't matter because history had ended and there would never again be any real problems confronting America?

Mike

Stunning - that the American public TWICE elected someone so clueless. (Well OK. He really wasn't elected that first time as much as he was appointed by King Scalia.) Now the only question is: Would it be better to see him and all his coherts brought to trial for their misdeeds or are we better off just letting tham fade into the sunset (or woodwork, or whatever)?

MBunge: but we could drink beer with him! What other qualification is there for the presidency?

So what. Hundreds of thousands dead, just as many horribly injured, for nothing. So what. Bush is lucky shoe throwing is such an insult in Iraq. There are plenty of grenades lying around that country.

I'm saving my quarters for Geeez's carnival booth. Can I bring shitkickers?

"So what?" he answers? Godamighty.

Allright, let's credit him with following a thought out strategy. Al Qaeda was hiding out in Afghanistan, a forbidding place geographically and politically.

So it might have been a strategic move to draw al Qaeda to a more favorable battlefield while, at the same time, neutralizing an old enemy in Saddam.

Brilliant, right?

So how come the geniuses who put together this plan knew zip about the political landscape of Iraq, made no plan for occupation, prepared nothing for reconstruction.

And Mr. Bush shrugs and asks, "So what?"

To call him a dog is an insult to dogs.

MBunge wrote: "... Republicans and people in the media who should have had enough exposure to Bush to recognize his crippling limitations. Were they all willfully blind or did they just convince themselves it didn't matter because ... "

They convinced themselves that it didn't matter because they understood that Bush was nothing but a figurehead -- a smirking, backslapping, glad-handing shill who would do and say what he was told to do and say by Dick Cheney and the other kleptocratic, war-profiteering white collar crooks of the Cheney-Bush gang.

For the most part, America's Ultra-Rich Ruling Class, Inc. has got exactly what it wanted from the Cheney-Bush regime: an unprecedented, historic concentration of wealth and power in the hands of the wealthy and powerful, which may well be impossible to reverse any time soon, if ever.

The major things they did NOT get, of course, are (1) their hands on the Social Security trust fund, and (2) their hands on Iraq's oil.

The failure of the Cheney-Bush gang's corrupt war of unprovoked aggression to seize control of Iraq's oil was principally due to their error of buying the self-serving lies of the convicted embezzler Ahmed Chalabi whom they intended to install as the "new improved Saddam", heading up an authoritarian US puppet regime that would run Iraq for the benefit and profit of US oil corporations. That plan failed because Chalabi had no support and no organization in Iraq, and the Cheney-Bush gang had no other plan, and Iraq descended into civil war and chaos.

"That Bush considers this irrelevant is not entirely surprising, but it is a reminder of just how unwilling he is to accept any responsibility for his tragic errors."

Dodging those shoes was another.

Iraq was about getting a guy who was a thorn in the side of the Bush family.

Period.

Out of curiosity, though---what was the timeframe between Iraqis' tearing down that giant Baghdad statue of Saddam and beating it in the face with their shoes---and the day that they hung the bastard?

I might start a countdown from the time Bush almost got beaned with a journalist's shoes, and---well, you know....

We should all mail Bush a pair of shoes - thousands of pairs of shoes, from every corner of America. They would make a point, and could, like Sarah Palin's glitzy wardrobe, be donated to charity after they'd made their point.

'So what' is what I hope Obama says when Bush is asking for protection from the World because he is wanted at the Hague by all.

In the now infamous words of Rev. Wright(Right): God Damn Bush! God Damn Bush!
So be it,
st john

Tragic errors? There were no errors made by George Bush. He wanted war, thirsted for it, and so war came.

Quaker in a Basement:

So how come the geniuses who put together this plan knew zip about the political landscape of Iraq, made no plan for occupation, prepared nothing for reconstruction.

Well I think it comes to forward thinking. Those who were in a position to forward think, and plan the post-invastion strategy were against the war to start with - hence strategists were snubbed or generals against Bush were quietly retired. Those who were gung-ho, and pro-invasion really didn't care about the results other than rapid invasion, and had no plan other than to bank on the fact that all Iraqis are Americans waiting to come out.

The one thing that I've come to realize is that a solider's job is to fight. Every now and then, the pentagon will need a conflict to justify its budget / existance in its current capacity. This was the same for the samurai class after Japan was united by the Tokugawa Shogunate. There was peace, and it took 200 years for the warrior class to become obsolete - or in Japan's case in the way of modernization.

To bring a parallel, I think there are a lot of cold war types still alive and kicking in very high places looking to justify their existance and a Bush presidency was just what they needed to get back into the game. I still don't understand the absolute need for the missle shield in Poland or the Czech Republic, but it seems like some more of the Cold War mentality that stands in the way of modernization and globalization. Then again, nationalistic principles really do clash with global integration...

I've heard it said that bush is smarter than he appears to most people, but I find it impossible to believe that this man can be considered smart in any sense of the word. His brain just doesn't seem to absorb and critically analyze anything. He just spouts crap whenever he opens his mouth.

Note that he accepts that Al-Qa'ida wasn't in Iraq. The shoes briefly caused him to accept consensus reality before he recovered enough for the delusions to kick in again.

We may not be able to throw a shoe at Bush, but maybe all of us who would like to do just that should send him an old shoe as a symbolic point. Could you imagine how many millions of shoes would be coming his way?

Al Qaeda isn't really in Iraq. I know some groups might call themselves that, or our propaganda machine might call them that, and some Iraqi factions call their enemy factions "al Qaeda" in order to get US support to obliterate them....

Al Qaeda in Iraq is not the same thing. Despite years and years of claims from lazy media and lying propaganda outfits to the contrary.

And Bush's comment isn't that illogical. If there are 10 people in the world which constitute "al Qaeda" does it matter if we try to capture and kill them in Pakistan, Afghanistan, or Iraq? (Of course, it sidesteps the issue of creating new international terrorists, and the destruction brought to an innocent population).

When all reporters can muster is a feeble, "but al Qaeda wasn't in Iraq before the invasion" it grants the lying President's premise. The neo-cons have played you, when you phrase things this way.

Reporters should say , "no, al Qaeda wasn't in Iraq before, and they aren't there now - you are just trying, once again, to dishonestly tie this unconnected war in Iraq to the war against terrorism."

Illiterate Pashtun Taliban, or Uzbek warlords aren't al Qaeda, they aren't getting on airplanes and planning massive acts of terrorism against civilians. Neither are ex-Baathist Sunnis becoming international terrorists - they're plotting to kill Shiites.

Just because the NYT says something, doesn't make it correct, or liberal. Between the "liberal" hawks in our media, and the straight-up neocons, our frame for discussion of foreign policy has been completely determined.

Here's a thought: instead of sending shoes or images of shoes to the White House; send them to the journalists who so eloquently have misreprensted the truth of this administration, still today? This may be more telling than the shoes to the White House. That would be expected and given no further notice. Bush is as good as gone and he will just laugh at the shoe collection. He does not have the cultural savvy to recognize the extent of this insult. But, there may be some "journalists" and their co-workers who do.

Send them to Fox News, CNN, MSNBC, NBC, ABC, CBS and address them to your personal favorite: Hannity, O'Reilly, Koric, Schaeffer(sp), et al.

One other point: how did the shoe thrower get off 2 shoes? I guess I have seen too many Hollywood movies depicting the quickness and vigilance of SS Agents: Kevin Costner and Clint Eastwood. As someone somewhere else suggested, a Purple Heart for Dana P for her bravery and courage under attack of her master!

peace,
st john

Or, alternatively:

So, George, let's assume that the movement of Al Qaeda to Iraq is vastly bigger than anyone, even the CIA, has suggested. Let's say 5000 people managed to travel from Afghanistan or Pakistan into Iraq and we managed to kill them all. Great.

Can we now return to the subject of the more than quarter of a million other people whose deaths you're responsible for who had not a damn thing to do with Al Qaeda?

A murdering, incompetent little prick to the last.

George: Well, I cleaned up all the dog shit in the kitchen! Commend me!

Martha: But, there wasn't any dog shit in the kitchen until you turned a thousand dogs loose in there!

George: So what?

Martha: Here. Smell my shoe.

Silliness aside, this is a jaw-dropping, head-shaking reminder of Bush logic.

George, "history" is going to say that you are the most mind-numbingly stupid President..... ever. You're original case for war in Iraq was the link between Hussein's WMDs and al Qaeda. That's how you sold it. Hussein has nukes, bio-chemicals, yada, yada, and he will give them to al Queda to use against the U.S. yada, yada. You couldn't wait for weapons inspections because waiting for the "smoking gun" would result in a "mushroom cloud". Remember? Now that al Qaeda wasn't tied to Iraq, you say "so what"? Now that WMDs never existed post Gulf War, you say, oh well,"the world is better off without Saddam".

This idiot should be drawn and quartered. F*ck the shoe throwing.

It wasn't 'Bush.' It was Pelosi, Reid, and all the rest of the democratic party leadership going back to Clinton's first term, the refusal NPR and PBS to discomfort the self image of its audience, and the self congratulatory and despicably lazy political culture in general without all of which none of the disasters of the last twenty years could have been visited on the world. Not Iraq. Not Katrina. Not our economic collapse. Not the shredding of the constitution. Not the complete abrogation of meaningful action on the climate crisis. Not the fact that a million and a half Gazans, half of them children, are being starved as you read this.

Bush is much too easy a target.

al Qaeda must be a sorry and small organization if their major theater was ever Iraq.

Why do "they" always get to inflate the threat (like a gnat on an elephant) without putting it in perspective?

is there any way his utter lack of intellectual depth went unnoticed by the folks around him? I mean, both Republicans and people in the media who should have had enough exposure to Bush to recognize his crippling limitations. Were they all willfully blind or did they just convince themselves it didn't matter because history had ended and there would never again be any real problems confronting America?

Two words for you: Sarah Palin

Why would anyone want to send shoes to Boy George?

A suggestion, go to http://www.davidstuff.com/bagdad-bob.htm
make a copy of Iraqi Minister of Information's statment "Bush & Rumsfeld will be hit with Shoes."
"I speak English better than Bush." "He's retarded."

mail to Laura Bush, so she can read to Bush.

Had Bush read the newspapers or looked at the news he would have had fair warning of the shoe incident!!!

The senate issues a report on Friday which essentially states that Bush/Cheney/ and Rumsfeld (among others) are guilty of war crimes and not and responsible for the deaths of detainees and mass murder and the MSM does not even mention it???

It should be pounded into their computers and monitors every single day. Maybe a sign could be placed in Blagojevich's hair.
From Greenwald's site:

"...It's not like there's any evidence that Bush committed any crimes or anything, said Pelosi. From Jane Mayer's The Dark Side (h/t Hume's Ghost):

One year of the Afghan prison operation alone cost an estimated 100 million, which Congress hid in a classified annex of the first supplemental Afghan appropriation bill in 2002. Among the services that U.S. taxpayers unwittingly paid for were medieval-like dungeons, including a reviled former brick factory outside of Kabul known as "The Salt Pit." In 2004, a still-unidentified prisoner froze to death there after a young CIA supervisor ordered guards to strip him naked and chain him overnight to the concrete floor. The CIA has never accounted for the death, nor publicly reprimanded the supervisor. Instead, the Agency reportedly promoted him.

Those Blagojevich tapes sure are disgusting, aren't they? Let's study those some more..."

Gen. Taguba says no doubt as to guilt but asks are we gonna' do anything about it pretty much means we are past "due process" or the court's phase and now it's just a matter of administering the punishment. As if to say:
"If you get your hands of Rumsfeld just go ahead and hang him since he's been found guilty of torture and mass murder and expresses no remorse. Same with Bush, Cheney, Rice, Addington, Rove. and a host of others should be imprisoned.

A senate report signed by even McCain and the media does not mention a word of it. Maybe if the senate gave it while standing naked our media would mention it...naw, they'd just talk about the nudity.

Everytime I watch the shoe-throwing incident, I laugh at the Secret Service protection of Bush -

This is what I call "Shock and Awe."

(this agent failed to do what he was supposed to do, but he'll get a pass.)

I can just hear Bush now,
"Sticks and stones may break my bones, but shoes will never hurt me."

***the saying sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me.

I think you guys should chill. They all made mistakes but try to do what they do and I'm sure you feel the weight after a while. This isn't a time of revenge we need to calmly approach whats going on in the world and pointing fingers back and forth isn't going to help anything. Every person responsible will have to live with those actions. I can feel that there will be any worse punishment then if we take that away from them by punishing them ourselves. Everyone needs to start looking past our comfort zone and understand opposing views. Not just for us but for the children and the people we can affect with our lives. A man had a dream once and I think I have shared that dream. Maybe it was just his view of the dream. His interpretation from that day but from how I see it. I see a world where everyone works together rather then pointing the blame. We all pick up that stake we carry it across the finish line. I can not change the world. Everyone has to do it together. For all the men woman and children who have died for this.