The problem, however, is that we haven’t exactly set an example there (or here, for that matter) for the rule of law. Proper legal procedings are not happening and are not going to happen. Not only is it heartbreakingly distressing that he may have already been tortured, but the Beeb says he hasn’t been allowed to see a lawyer yet either. Although it doesn’t create as visceral reaction, that fact should be just as alarming. We already know Caligutard is too craven and stupid a leader to take the road of diplomacy in dealing with this guy, but at the very least he should be receiving basic legal rights. Don’t the whole lot of those pigfucking warmongers care that this guy’s torture or lifelong imprisonment puts a lie to every “reason” they had for justifying the invasion by saying Iraq needed democracy, freedom, and human rights? Oh wait, they already got the oil rights they wanted and many plum contracts for Halliburton, carry on…

Oh, and I should add that I’d hit it.

I know you’re right about the president and what he represents – he is the head of state and stands in for a monarch – but given what we’ve done there aren’t these special circumstances? Again, can’t we be magnanimous? Isn’t that part of the rule of law?

I might very well be getting ahead of events and perhaps we’ll see that he was treated decently. I hope that’s the case.

But we have a chance – and by ‘we’ I mean Preznit Bunnypants et al – to act like grown-ups. Let him be censured in some mild yet dignified manner and let us all go on our way. Let us not add fuel to the fire. And dear God let us not injure him. Apart from the practical cost such an action would incur – haven’t we done enough to trash our reputation? Must we do more?

I was very interested to read an account of this at Inside Iraq, which has been the blog I read most about the situation there. It is consistently shaming/harrowing/necessary. The writer there was embarrassed and sad that this had occurred. She was grieved that this was an insult to Maliki who had to endure it.

We have got to start realizing that this is about Iraq. We did an appalling thing there. They have to deal with it. We are only bankrupt from it: they are dying. I was in the middle of reading The Forever War by Dexter Filkin but can’t stand any more of it. Apart from the narcissism and the you-are-there-style of the magazine writer (which is fine in a magazine but not in a long form) its complete obsession with America and Americans is nauseating. Can we not try to think about them for a change?

At Inside Iraq (it’s run by the Baghdad McClatchey office if you don’t know it) can be found the most horrible, wrenching account of the human cost of this catastrophe: an Iraqi mother goes to a make-shift morgue to try to find the body of her son. She is shown a room full of body parts and invited to search for whatever she can find of him. Which she does.

I don’t know how you can survive such horror. And I wish I didn’t have to feel that my tax dollars made that happen.

This incident, now that my initial euphoria has worn off, seems to be the final straw for me. Like all of us here I’ve done my best to keep it together as I saw this country embark on a truly evil course of action. But to see a young man stand up to Bush and call him what he is has made me more ashamed than I can say. And now, if we damage him in any way, there will be – literally – hell to pay.

Well, it hasn’t become a plenipotentiary position overnight. The point is that the President (and we are talking about the office here as opposed to particular people) is our representative to the world. It’s been like that for decades.

Why are people so royally ticked when the President does something embarassing (as opposed to the Speaker, or the Chief Justice)? Why do people want to see Bush rung up on war crimes, as opposed to Denny Hastert, or Trent Lott? Because, to the world, the President is the United States — rightly or wrongly, l’etat, c’est lui. He’s the showrunner. He could instantaneously tell Dick Cheney to take a freaking hike if he wanted to (as in: stripping the V.P. of any sort of power besides that of the Observatory Circle leafblower), or issue orders mothballing Gitmo and whatever the School of the Americas is called now, or step on the gas with respect to environmental and securities regulations, and so on and so on.

Maybe a parliamentary system would be better for the way things work around here. But, for now, the Presidency freaking matters. Take a look at the wave of universal joy around the world when Barry took it down, and tell me that it doesn’t.

But you can express an opinion without resorting to a physical assault. Hell — the guy could have screamed a non-preselected question at Dubya about dead women and children, Dubya could have said something stupid as is his wont, and the guy could have decided to not take “fuck you and your dead civilians” for an answer and pressed him, as so many here do not do. That would have been just as good — if not better — than the hucking of shoes.

Yeah — we got an indelible image and a street hero. But a moment of true criticism, eliciting a moment of truth (spoken or unspoken) from Dubya did not require the throwing of stuff.