Sometimes A Journo Is Just A Journo...

...And Sometimes He or She Is Something More.

Like a citizen who stands up for his country and his fellow citizens.

Paul Willcocks, risking the wrath of his own kind, tells us why thinks this is true in the case of the Iraqi shoe thrower, journalist Muntadar al-Zaidi:

.....(C)onsider all this from Zaidi's perspective.

Bush instigated an invasion of Iraq based on false claims that the country was hiding weapons of mass destruction and aiding al-Qaeda.

The war was launched with no real planning for what would happen next, and an apparent expectation that the Iraqis would all do a spirited dance of welcome in the streets and then quickly aside their sectarian differences, elect a government and live happily ever after.

Mission Accomplished, as Bush claimed five years ago.

And Iraqis suffered.

About 4.7 million people - more than the population of British Columbia, or one in six Iraqis, are refugees. They have been driven from their homes by fighting, or their homes have simply been destroyed.

At least 100,000 civilians have been killed, more than the Canadian deaths in the First and Second World Wars combined. Some estimates have put the number of deaths much higher, at more than 500,000, when the effects of collapsing health care and other problems are included.....

{snippety-doo-dah}

Zaidi didn't act like a journalist. But he did act on behalf of millions of people in Iraq who have been damaged by the ineptitude, recklessness and arrogance of the Bush administration. He's being cheered in the Mideast. And he's not being much criticized in the U.S. either. Bush leaves a mess - unresolved conflicts, massive debt, a world economic crisis and a discredited and demoralized country. Dodging a couple of shoes seems a small penance.

And I agree.

So I left the following comment at Mr. Willcocks' place saying so:

Excellent piece Paul. Regardless one's job, sometimes there are bigger issues than professional courtesy at stake, tacit agreements or not.

Especially in this case given that so many Iraqi people have absolutely no way to make their displeasure with the invasion and its terrible, tragic afermath known to the people of the country whose leaders did the invading in their name. And as you made clear, the reasons publicly stated for the invasion are now known, and were likely then known, to be demonstrably false.

Given this, it is worth remembering another journalist, one who was much ridiculed at the time for having the temerity to do her job by asking Mr. Bush to explain the real reason he invaded Iraq.

Scared out of his wits at this viscious line of questioning from an octagenerian named Helen Thomas, Mr. Bush ducked her metaphorical flying shoes by conflating the Taliban with the regime of Saddam Hussein.

And if you don't remember Ms. Thomas' actual questioning of Mr. Bush, you may remember her immortalization (starting @ ~18' 00") by Stephen Colbert during his infamous Press Club speech when an entire flock of surreptitious shoes were sent flying Mr. Bush's way......

OK?

______
The image at the top of the post is a copy of Joseph Wilson's Op-Ed piece in the New York Times in which he concluded that there was no evidence of uranium going from Niger to Saddam Hussein's Iraq (one of the 'false/forged' claims that was used as 'evidence' of an active reconstitution of nuclear weapons programs by Hussein's regime). The Op-Ed was published in June 2003. The scribbles at the top of the page were written by Dick Cheney. They say things like: 'Have they (the CIA, who sent Wilson to Niger on a fact-finding mission) done this sort of thing before?' and 'Or did his wife (Wilson's wife is Valerie Plame) send him on a junket?' Based on this, and all that happened thereafter, it is difficult for any reasonable person who has been paying attention not to conclude that Mr. Cheney et al. went after Ms. Plame in an attempt to discredit/silence her and her husband for stating the truth about the trumped-up 'evidence' that was used to bamboozle the American people into a bogus war against Iraqis such as Mr. al-Zairi who are now reduced to throwing shoes in a vain and toothless attempt to honour their dead.

.