March 12, 2009 BBC

Almost as soon as it went up The Shoe has been brought down. The monument commemorating the journalist who hurled his shoes at President George W. Bush was taken down only one day after it was erected. Seems the Central Government just didn't approve.

Children unwrap the sculpture of a shoe created as a monument to the shoes thrown by an Iraqi journalist at former U.S. President George W. Bush, in Tikrit, 130 kilometers (80 miles) north of Baghdad, Iraq, Friday, Jan. 30, 2009. The director of an orphanage in Tikrit said Iraqi police told her the shoe sculpture had to be removed because government property should not be used for something with a political bias. (AP)

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What a delicious piece of irony. Bush killed jobs here, but at least he created a few in Iraq!

Their deployment as a makeshift missile robbed President George Bush of his dignity and landed their owner in jail. But the world's most notorious pair of shoes have yielded an unexpected bonanza for a Turkish shoemaker.

Ramazan Baydan, owner of the Istanbul-based Baydan Shoe Company, has been swamped with orders from across the world, after insisting that his company produced the black leather shoes which the Iraqi journalist Muntazar al-Zaidi threw at Bush during a press conference in Baghdad last Sunday.

Baydan has recruited an extra 100 staff to meet orders for 300,000 pairs of Model 271 - more than four times the shoe's normal annual sale - following an outpouring of support for Zaidi's act, which was intended as a protest, but led to his arrest by Iraqi security forces.

Orders have come mainly from the US and Britain, and from neighbouring Muslim countries, he said.

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December 17, 2008 CNN

From The Cafferty File:

The Iraqi journalist who threw his shoes at President Bush during a press conference in Baghdad went before a judge last night. A source at the Iraqi Central Criminal Court told CNN he will likely be charged with assaulting a foreign head of state.

According to wire reports, Iraqi law dictates that he could face seven years in prison. And whether you agree with the war in Iraq or not, it probably saved this man’s life. If he had thrown his shoes while Saddam was in power he likely would have been executed on the spot.

Instead he was arrested and promptly put in jail. Thousands of Iraqis are calling him a hero and are rallying for his release.

When asked by CNN’s Candy Crowley yesterday what should happen to the man, President Bush said authorities shouldn’t overact. He called the incident an interesting form of expression and added that it’s part of the free society emerging in Iraq.

The man will stand trial, perhaps as early as next week, and reportedly be represented by a lawyer who said he will file a request to have his client released on bail.

Here’s my question to you: What’s the appropriate punishment for the man who threw his shoes at President Bush?

December 17, 2008 CNN

December 16, 2008 BBC World

December 14, 2008 C-SPAN