It's still a ludicrous sentencing, considering the cascade of more serious insults to Iraqi society the court system should be worried about. But from the start the shoe-thrower's case was all about theater--his own improv performance kicking off a dance of judicial kangaroos intent on creating the illusion of a law-abiding Iraq.
Here's how absurd it got. The trial, the Times notes, was briefly postponed "while a judge determined if Mr. Bush’s trip to Iraq was an official state visit, with the defense arguing that because it took place in the Green Zone, which was then controlled by the American military, it was not an official visit to Iraq."
Muntazer was asked at his trial what he had to say in his defense. “I am innocent,” he said. “It was a natural reaction to the crime of occupation.”
Judge Abdulamir Hassan al-Rubaie would eventually have none of it and handed down a punishment likely dictated from the neo-authoritarian pen of Iraqi Prime Minister Nour al-Maliki, a master of triangulation between his image as an independent, his subtle strongman's persona, and his lifeline's dependence on American indulgence.
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I discovered I’d ran out of toilet tissue in the bathroom the other day
and all I could find was a page of newspaper being mainly comprised of a photo of Bush and Blair grinning side by side.
‘Not very respectful,’ I hear you all scream.
And I wouldn’t encourage anyone else to do the same in case they were found out, accused of glorifying terrorism and ended up being waterboarded or having their privates slashed at the very least.
“And I wouldn’t encourage anyone else to do the same in case they were found out”
Ah, yes. We can sense the utter fear for your rights and safety in your voice as you pronounce this on the internet to all.
That’s not me you’re hearing screaming.