The shoe-thrower with a message

The almost now notorious shoe-thrower - remember? that George Bush news conference in Baghdad and him ducking as a shoe was hurled at him - has been released from jail and provided his reasons for doing what he did.

Muntazer al-Zaidi, the reporter cum shoe-thrower writes in Comment is Free "Why I Threw the Shoe" in the The Guardian :

"I am not a hero. But I have a point of view. I have a stance. It humiliated me to see my country humiliated; and to see my Baghdad burned, my people killed. Thousands of tragic pictures remained in my head, pushing me towards the path of confrontation. The scandal of Abu Ghraib. The massacre of Falluja, Najaf, Haditha, Sadr City, Basra, Diyala, Mosul, Tal Afar, and every inch of our wounded land. I travelled through my burning land and saw with my own eyes the pain of the victims, and heard with my own ears the screams of the orphans and the bereaved. And a feeling of shame haunted me like an ugly name because I was powerless."

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