Imagine if shoes had flown during Saddam’s day

The angry Iraqi TV journalist whose name-calling and shoe-hurling upstaged President George W. Bush’s surprise visit to Iraq illustrated Iraq’s progress toward democracy, at least for columnist Roger L. Simon. He wrote: Iraq is “turning into a (somewhat) decent place to live. That buffoon-like shoe chucker – his name is Muntadhar al-Zeidi from Al-Baghdadia channel which broadcasts from Cairo – proved it. No matter what happens to al-Zeidi now (and it won’t be much if anything), it will be nothing like what would have happened to him if he had hurled a shoe at the president during the previous Iraqi administration of Saddam Hussein.”