"This is a goodbye kiss from the Iraqi people, dog."

So Bush visits Iraq and then Afghanistan to try to put a gloss on the past eight years and push the line that both these country's are different places than they were eight years ago.

In Iraq it was too much for one journalist who removed his shoes - I suppose having been searched for weapons before entering, this was all he was left with - and hurled them at Bush shouting, "This is a goodbye kiss from the Iraqi people, dog."

It really highlighted the false lick of paint Bush is attempting to apply to his disastrous time in office. As he stands there pushing falsehoods, an Iraqi journalist attacks him with one of their most serious insults .

It was also pregnant with symbolism. In the Arab world, throwing shoes at somebody is considered a serious insult, as is even showing them the soles of one's footwear, as demonstrated by jubilant Iraqis towards the statue of Saddam Hussein as it was toppled in Baghdad during the 2003 invasion.

He then moved to Afghanistan where the garbage continued to pour from his gob:

"I am confident we will succeed in Afghanistan because our cause is just," he said in a speech.

"Afghanistan is a dramatically different country than it was eight years ago," he added. "We are making hopeful gains."

The very fact that he is taking about "hopeful gains" seven years after invading that country says it all. The Russians spent ten years making "hopeful gains" there before finally packing up and walking away.

And, of course, whilst in Iraq Bush signed the very timetable for withdrawal that he had always said he would never sign.

Later, Mr Bush signed a security pact with Prime Minister Maliki which calls for US troops to be withdrawn from Iraq by the end of 2011.

He has spent the last seven years telling us that any timetable for withdrawal would hand victory to the terrorists, but, as always with this charlatan, his language changes as soon as he is forced to do something else by circumstances outwith his control.

But the image of his last trip to Iraq is a fitting one which seemed to sum up his entire Iraqi misadventure. Where there should have been order, there was chaos. Where Bush looked for gratitude, he found only raw anger.

There's symbolism there.

UPDATE:



Michael Ware explains how such an insult is reserved in Iraq, "for only the most despised."

And he also explains just what the agreement Bush has signed actually says. People working for Bush think that the US has spent too much blood for Bush to sign this agreement. As this agreement surrenders America's capacity to wage war.

UPDATE II:

It now transpires that the Iraqi journalist, Muntadar al-Zaidi, a reporter with Cairo-based network Al Baghdadia Television, has personal experience of the carnage which Bush has inflicted on that nation.

Zaidi, colleagues said, was kidnapped by Shiite militiamen last year and was later released.

So he wasn't simply trying to "get attention" as Bush glibly stated. Or rather, if he was trying to get attention, it was to highlight the catastrophe of Bush's misadventure.

Tags: Bush, Iraq, Afghanistan, shoes, thrown