President Bush ducks flying shoes at weird press conference
By Jimmy Orr | 12.14.08
Say what you will about President Bush, one thing’s for sure: He’s got good reflexes.
It’s not often that objects are thrown at a president. Sure, maybe a sharp verbal jab from a frustrated reporter - but a shoe? Or two shoes?
Final trip to Iraq
No, it wasn’t Helen Thomas. This exchange occurred in Baghdad today when Bush and Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki were holding a joint press conference.
The reporter - Muntazer al-Zaidi from Al-Baghdadia (a television network in Cairo) - yelled, “This is the farewell kiss, you dog” then threw his shoes at the President.
The Matrix
Bush, to his credit, was almost like Keanu Reeves in “The Matrix” when he successfully dodged two shoes.
Security guards toppled the irate reporter immediately, and he was quickly removed from the area.
How’d Bush respond? With humor.
“It doesn’t bother me. If you want the facts, it was a size 10 shoe that he threw,” joked the President.
Click here to read the full story on the President’s trip today to Baghdad by Monitor correspondent Jane Arraf.
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2. common | 12.14.08
i don’t think it was funny. People in different countries have different ways of expressing there thoughts, anger; my oppinion is i don’t think that Bush should’ve said anything. The one that threw the shoe should’ve been charged, and, it should have been tooken seriously. A lot of people is suffering because of this war, and they are tired. I pray for this country. God Bless America.
3. Wow | 12.14.08
Secret Service was very lax in their response. I was shocked that the man was able to lob off two shoes before being subdued. This is what you call the most elite security team in the world???? If that were a gun in the same amount of time the man could have emptied his clip. Here you are in one of the worlds most hostile places and you’re not in hair trigger response mode??? This is an embarrasment and should be dealt with at Secret Service. Those agents need to turn in their badges. They’ve gotten fat and lazy.
4. George | 12.14.08
I’m surprised W knows what a shoe is. Lucky for us he didn’t mistake it for a nucular weapon of mass destruction.
5. SEAN | 12.14.08
This only confirmed what I have always suspected. President Bush would have made an excellent anything other than leading America. Great reflexes though.
9. Dave | 12.15.08
Those shoes are the WMDs that Bush has been talking about all along… and they’re right there in plain sight! Imagine if all of them had thrown their shoes at once!
And I think by now the Secret Service doesn’t give a **** about Bush… he’s got about a week left, so maybe they were too busy grabbing coffee to care?
If you watch the video, the Secret Service never even subdues the guy, it’s fellow reporters that swarm him and take him out of the press conference.
So maybe my theory holds… why block a shoe when you can sip a latté.
10. LB | 12.15.08
I too am amazed at the amount of time it took for the Secret Service to move into action. I’m also suprised that no one attempted to shield our “President”. Sure hope presidential secuiry for Obama is less lax and more effective!
11. RIver Boat Queen | 12.15.08
That shoe dude was rude and his outburst is uncalled for.
Now he’s chillen in some homeland security tank and I hope that they rip up his shoes to pieces.
There are ways to express displeasure but being rude and treating the President of the USA like a bum is an outrage.
How dare this man be allowed to fire off not one but both shoes.
I am wondering where our Secret Service Personell were.
They were asleep on the job and had this shoe been a gun, there’d go our President! I don’t care how you feel about our President - no one deserves to be so disrespected - especially not the leader of the most powerful nation on Earth.
12. IfItWasn’tTragicIldLaugh | 12.15.08
Bush is responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands and all he gets is a close encounter with a size ten? It doesn’t seem fair.
13. Dude1 | 12.15.08
It would have been cool if the Secret Service would have put 20 bullets in the guy’s face before he got the second shoe off. Unfortunately, they were kind of sleeping on the job here.
14. tom | 12.15.08
I would like to see a movement in the US to send Bush a shoe from every american to the whitehouse befre le leaves office.
The fool joked about it being a size ten and how thats democracy as the security troops beat the man outside.
But what do we expect from a man who turns a blind eye on torture and civil rights violations.
I would have *ahem* Stepped in on behalf of the man once subdued.
A shoe is a great insult but he could have haken the High sole’d road.
15. Vic | 12.15.08
This action reflects very poorly on the country’s civil society. Whatever be the public opinion of a particular individual, the office of the President of the United States, and for that matter, any other country,is an honourable one. It is an unfortunate incident.
16. Keyser Soze | 12.15.08
What an insult for Bush. It is worse than being assassinated. After terminating hundreds of thousands of lives, he is wondering what was wrong with Muntadar al-Zeidi (the reporter never to be seen again in “free” Iraq)
17. bilal | 12.15.08
1. Secret Service is so over-hyped (thank you Hollywood)
2. Bush has great reflexes! Matrix analogy was really funny 
3. Bush completely deserved it. If “powerful” leaders ever really did get in contact with the common folk they would never dare cross the lines Bush and his kind (all over the world) have crossed.
18. Mark | 12.15.08
Bush is a criminal psychotic in every psychiatric sense of the term. He is the most hated individual in the world, and he deserves no respect. Just because he stole the office of the President does not mean he should treated differently than any other criminal. America is no longer the most powerful nation because he betrayed the american people sold the economy from under them and murdered over a million. Forget about shoes, he should be locked up in a maximum security prison.
19. Al | 12.15.08
The reporter did what billions of men and women around planet earth want to do to Bush. Electing Obama will help erase some of the contempt and hatred that we have earned with the suffering we have inflicted in Iraq. We need to make a formal apology to the Iraqi people for the atrocities they have suffered.
21. Larry Feldman | 12.15.08
There is a grand celebration around the world today and the only disappointment is that the shoes did not connect with their target.
23. Patriot | 12.15.08
The man who threw those shoes is a hero. He should be given a medal for having the balls to do what most Americans only dream of doing. I only wish he’d been more successful in his “shoeing” of Bush.
24. Andre | 12.15.08
The man who threw those shoes should receive a medal. The country is tried of the war wich started with the invation!! We trust that the situation will soon change with the new leadership.God Bless Ameriaca!
ps it is a pity the shoes did not hit the target
25. lorax2 | 12.15.08
Here’s what the man said as he threw his shoes at Bush:
“This is a farewell kiss for you, you dog.
This is from the widows, the orphans, and those killed in Iraq.”
A Johns Hopkins University study several years ago said between 300,000 and 900,000 innocent Iraqi civilians have been killed during the Iraq occupation. A similar British study put the number between one million and 1,500,000. Given that Bush lied to start a war against a country that did not attack us and that any Iraqis who he has killed in this illegal and immoral war is a war crime, we should not be throwing shoes at Bush. We should throw the book at him. When do the war crimes trials begin?
28. Iraqi civilian | 12.15.08
Dear All,
If you see the vidio again, the shoes may be mistakes the (target) face of president George Bush, but if you noted the second shoe will directly hit the US flag,
30. Nathan | 12.15.08
Before you say another word about how Bush has committed these so called “atrocities” you may want to stop for 2 seconds to think about what would have happened to this man had he thrown a shoe at Sadam in Iraq before America liberated its people. If you think Bush is so bad, maybe you should move to Iran and throw a shoe at Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and see what happens. We need to stop taking our freedom forgranted.
32. eddie | 12.15.08
at last bush had the chance to prove the existance of mass destruction weapons
too bad iraq didn’t have the chance to develope “stupidity” guided shoes
33. Iraqi citizen | 12.15.08
It was better for Bush to make his face a shield to protect his flag, he is really a coward president, at least he should fobid the shoe to reach the flag, what a bad soldier!
35. gargamel | 12.15.08
You people kill me. The stpidity that permeates our country is astounding.
What all the idiots that hate bush should do is live under a brutal dictatorship for one week. then your sense of importance and inability to understand the true depth of cruelty, inhumanity, and just plain evil might change, but as it stands you are nothing more than ignorant spoiled children living under the flag of the greatest nation in the history of this planet.
What everyone seems to forget is the fact that running a nation is no easy job. Add to that the fact that we live in a time unlike any other in history where world affairs are shifting so rapidly that predicting events are virtually impossible.
We shall see how all the Bush bashers react when Obama ultimatly fails to correct this tanking WORLD ECONOMY. Thats right. The World economy is tanking, not just the U.S. When the Messiah ultimatly finds the reality of our delimma to be an unavoidable tailspin into worldwide depression no one will feel all warm and fuzzy anymore and then the true nature of spoiled Americans will surface in the wars for resource we spark all over the globe. Where will our sensibilities be then? what will will conjure up to justify those exploits?
It will be fun to watch if nothing else we will be entertained!!!
36. Samson Babayan | 12.15.08
To gargamel.What are you talking about?.Bush is a classic sociopath.He is a coward. His two daughters stay home and everyone else’s sons and daughters are sacrificed.Bush and Cheney made billions from Halliburton.He lied about Iraq.His dad put Saddam in power.Wake up everyone.
37. observer | 12.15.08
The man made some less than perfect decisions, like not making a stonger case to the UN and not being an open communicator, but he is clean at heart.
Those who hate Bush: You are either A) Dumber than Bush B) Just as smart as Bush or C) Smarter than Bush (becareful, Bush is not dumb, do your research on his book smarts and street smarts)
If you are dumber than Bush, don’t bother reading any further, you will continue to hate him based on the negative impacts of his decisions. Others… pretend you went back in time and make a list of the consequences of invading Iraq and not invading Iraq (its called risk analysis). If you considered everything, you will realize that it was a close call, and that invading Iraq was the lesser risk.
Obama will make smarter decisions and hopefully fix the negative impact.
38. What the Frack? | 12.15.08
It’s kind of sad when one of our president’s greatest moments can be attributed to dodging a shoe.
40. Proud American | 12.15.08
First of all…spell check people. Second…stop trying to sound smarter than you really are. What happened today was funny…wrong…but funny. It could have been much worse and we should all be thankful and have the same sense of humor that Bush has about this. Also, before you talk about how many people Bush has killed, remember how many people were being killed before the war even started. I was there for 2 years, and in those 2 years I saw an amazing difference overseas. It really wasn’t all blood, guts, and gore. We were not out there ripping heads off of innocent people and parading around with them on sticks. Hind sight is 20/20…so we can all look back and say how there are no WMD, but when we were told after 9/11…I remember several Americans being on board with Bush and supporting him. We were going off of the info that he had. He really was, and still is, trying to do the right thing. I do not agree with every decision has made, but then again i don’t agree with every decision anyone has made. He is after all human…and by no means psychic or perfect. The government as a whole said this was what needed to be done, and America backed this decision…until we found out that we were wrong…then it was “Well…it’s Bush’s fault!” Come on people…we are already busy fighting others, why turn on each other as well? Now more than ever we need to be united. Stop using this as a way to fight even more, and use this instead to laugh your butts off. He is OK, no one was hurt, and he had a shoe thrown at him. Size 10. Pretty funny stuff. We should be proud that our president has reflexes like that at his age.
41. Sara | 12.15.08
Regardless of anyone’s opinion of Bush, this was unnecessary and rude. I hope this guy gets punished - maybe they will hold him on “terroristic threats” since he did threaten the safety of a president. It really bothers me that someone would intentionally try to hurt the president. In it all, he is a human, and should not have to tolerate the amount of abuse he does. He is the leader of our country for at least the next few weeks. This guy will get his, and I will be glad to read about it
42. ashkan | 12.16.08
hi’
i am iranian and so happy bush can miss 
and iraq reporter must be punish
thx
bb
44. momo | 12.16.08
Maybe some consider it rude but at least no millions were killed by carpet boming, unless shoes where the wepons of mass distruction, please be fair
45. jermaine | 12.16.08
listen you people i am a Jamaican and i think that this reporter should be punished because regardless of what people thinks of president bush. he is still the president of the greatest nation (USA). that guy is disrespectful
46. Faraz | 12.17.08
The intenational award should be given to that man
He should through the boot right to his face
47. Sundar | 12.18.08
This one acts sums up what millions of people all over the globe want to do all long.
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Jimmy Orr has worked in politics for the majority of his professional career working for two U.S. Senators, two Governors and one President. Most recently, Orr served as White House Spokesman and Internet Director for President George W. Bush and Special Advisor to Governor Schwarzenegger for Internet Communications.
David Cook is Washington bureau chief of The Christian Science Monitor and host of the Monitor's newsmaker breakfasts. He was the Monitor's editor from 1994 to 2001. Cook is a graduate of Principia College, served in the U.S. Army, was a Bagehot Fellow at Columbia University, and is a member of the Gridiron Club, Washington's oldest journalistic organization.
1. wesman | 12.14.08
that first dodge was really impressive. Would have nailed a slower man right in the forehead.