Tonight at the Frontline Club we discuss what happens after Guanatamo with Karen Greenberg, author of “The Least Worst Place: How Guantanamo became the World’s Most Notorious Prison” We start at 7pm GMT/11am PST and as usual, if you can’t make it to the Club in person, you can join us online on the Club events page or on the Frontline Club live channel,

As the Obama Administration moves to shut down Guantanamo, leading American commentator Karen Greenberg, in a wide-ranging discussion with Peter Clarke, until recently one of the UK’s most senior counter-terrorism officials, discusses her remarkable and surprising new book about how the facility was set up, the challenges faced by the Obama administration in unwinding controversial Bush Administration detention policies, and the most pressing counter-terrorism issues faced by policymakers on both sides of the Atlantic. link

Muntazer al-Zaidi, the Iraqi journalist who famously threw his size 10’s at outgoing U.S. President George Bush and called him a "dog", goes on trial today. Zaidi has been held in prison for over two months and could face up to 15 years behind bars,

Zaidi was handcuffed and surrounded by a pack of security guards when he was brought to Iraq’s Central Criminal Court in Baghdad’s fortified Green Zone. Family members waiting for him inside the courthouse ululated wildly as he was brought in and draped an Iraqi flag across his shoulders. link

Photo taken from Welt Online.

Al Zeidi, the now infamous journalist who threw his shoes at outgoing U.S. President George W. Bush, is honoured in artistic fibreglass and copper in Tikrit this week. Artist Laith al Amari has created a giant shoe in honour of Al Zeidi and the Iraqi people. The sculpture is inscribed with a poem paying tribute to the journalist who still awaits trial more than a month after his attempt to shoehorn Bush. He is reportedly seeking political asylum in Switzerland. Meanwhile the alleged Turkish maker of Al-Zeidi’s shoes says sales are up 250%.

Turkish newspaper Yeni Safak reported Turkish businessman Ramazan Baydan had made the shoes and carried a front page picture of the design, alongside the headline”Made in Turkey.” Baydan said he had designed the style in 1999, and orders from Iraq had increased by 100 percent since the Bush incident. link

But, as the Welt Online article says, the more likely story is, like most shoes in Iraq, Al-Zaidi’s size 10’s are probably Chinese-made.

UPDATE: It appears the shoes have now been destroyed… Bit of a shame really.

“I swear to Allah, he is a hero,” said his sister, who goes by the
nickname Umm Firas, as she watched a replay of her brother’s attack on
an Arabic satellite station. “May Allah protect him.” link

However, in the same article, his old journalism trainer in Lebanon isn’t quite so impressed with his lack of journalistic detachment as the family in Baghdad,

“Regrettably, he didn’t learn anything from the course in Lebanon,
where we were taught ethics of journalism and how to be detached and
neutral,” [said Zanko Ahmed, a Kurdish journalist who attended a journalism training course with al-Zeidi in Lebanon.] link

Michael Totten, a  blogger and journalist who recently returned to the U.S. from Iraq, tells the National Review Online how al-Zeidi doesn’t realistically reflect the Iraqi journalists he has met,

“In the Combined Press Information
Center in Baghdad, where journalists are credentialed by the U.S. Army,
is a poster showing the faces of all the journalists killed in Iraq
last year. There are dozens of faces on that poster, and almost every
single one of them is Iraqi. Iraqi journalists are very brave, much
braver than I am, and I’d hate to see Americans get the wrong idea
about these people from one lousy incident.” link

The LA Times Babylon & Beyond blog has a round up of reaction across the Middle East.

U.S. President George Bush had a close encounter with the footwear of an Iraqi journalist this past weekend. Bush was at a press conference during one of his surprise visits to the Iraqi capital when Muntadar al-Zeidi, a reporter with Al-Baghdadiya TV channel, hurled his size 10’s at the outgoing President,

Before guards could wrestle the hostile interrogator to the floor, he got off a second shoe and shouted, “This is from the widows, the orphans and those who were killed in Iraq.” The Iraqi prime minister aided in the defense this time, holding up a hand to try to shield Bush. Bush, uninjured, laughed off the incident: “All I can report is it is a size 10,” he said later. link

Writing on the Modesto Bee blog embedded reporter Adam Ashton, who was in the room when the shoes started to fly, tells it the way he saw it,

As [the press conference] ended, a couple Iraqi security guards in
suits took away two more Iraqi journalists because one of them called
Zaidi’s protest “courageous.” Hammed bravely stood up for the
journalists. Talking to a friend just isn’t a crime. They were released
a few minutes later after some American officials intervened on their
behalf.

Some of the security guards started looming over members of the
White House press corps who flew in with Bush, at least until a White
House communications aide shooed them away.

The press conference was not aired live. Few political events are here.

Many of the broadcast reporters feared the Iraqi government would
take their cameras and tapes. They expect that things will be tougher
for them next time they cover one of Maliki’s events.

“This will have consequences for us,” one reporter told us.

That’s a shame. All the Iraqi reporters in the front row apologized
to Bush. It was a reporter who yanked Zaidi to the ground before Iraqi
or American guards could reach him. link

Mr. President George W. Bush received a pair of black, size 10 shoes in a Press conference in Iraq, on Sunday. But, sadly he didn’t receive them as gifts, but were thrown at him in extreme anger by an Iraqi TV reporter present in the press conference.

Such Awe!! Surely this is not an act of any journalistic etiquette.But Mr. Bush dodged it nicely, whereas, Prime minister of Iraq once more showed his complete support, while trying to catch the other shoe, but missed. Just like Iraq war, support and policies between two countries, all came out to be a mess, just as this press conference was.

Last time the shoes banging incident happened in 1960’s in United Nations NewYork times reported; New York Times The New York Times, Oct 13,- Premier Khrushchev waved his shoe today and banged it on his desk… Mr. Khrushchev thereupon pulled off his right shoe, stood up and brandished the shoe at the Philippine delegate on the other side of the hall. He then banged the shoe on his desk.

Throwing shoes might be a silly act for many in western world but it’s a very extreme action of dismay in the eastern contest. I’m wondering if next time journalists have to walk in barefoot in press conferences as for security precautions?

The resurrection of Hillary Clinton from embattled First Lady, loathed by many of her compatriots, to the favourite to recapture the White House next year, this time as the prime occupant of the Oval Office, is remarkable.

It began with her election as senator for New York in 2000, even as the rancour from the failed bid to impeach her husband for obstructing justice in the Monica Lewinsky affair lingered heavily over Washington.

She won well in a state she had barely visited before. Her critics expected her to be complacent on the campaign trail but she worked hard, travelling extensively and talking to voters. In the senate, she made friends of Republicans who expected to be her enemy. She listened, avoided confrontation and devoured her work.

In preparation for a presidential bid, she joined the Senate Armed Services Committee in order to burnish her image as a potential commander-in-chief. In January 2007 she announced she was running for president, and campaign funds began rolling in from admirers in Hollywood, Washington and Wall Street.

Early on, she was perturbed by the unexpectedly strong challenge of Barack Obama, the young pretender aiming to become the first black president. But by now his challenge for the Democratic Party’s nomination has probably been seen off. By mid-February we will likely know that Mrs Clinton has been chosen as the nominee.

By then half of the states will have held their primaries or caucuses where party members (and in some cases registered independents) choose their candidate. That part of the job done, how will she win the White House in November 2008, when George W Bush, to almost universal relief, stands down after two terms?

Her probable opponent will be Rudy Giuliani, the former mayor of New York who became a national figure with his emotive defiance after the 9/11 attacks, or possibly Mitt Romney, a former Massachusetts governor attempting a breakthrough of his own – to be the first Mormon president. Whoever she faces, Clinton’s biggest problem will be that a lot of people simply don’t like her. For the right wing, she remains the figure of hate she became during her husband’s presidency.

Rabid radio talk-show hosts, Fox News pundits and various columnists have practically built their careers around Hillary-hatred. When she advocates middle-of-the-road policies, they accuse her of deception. As First Lady, Mrs Clinton tried to introduce a form of “socialised medicine”, as it is called by its detractors, and failed because of her inability to compromise.

The presumption that she should be given an important job simply because she was the president’s wife explains some of the animosity towards her, as does her intense secrecy and deep-seated suspicion of the press. There can also be a condescending, ‘trust-me-I’m-right’ quality to her tone that makes some people’s blood boil. But much of the hostility is plain old chauvinism.

Mrs Clinton’s campaign is a model of discipline and focus. She has held just one press conference in nearly a year, and given very few interviews – all with carefully selected American news organisations. This is a perennial frustration for British and other foreign media in Washington. In Washington foreign hacks are placed at the back of the crowd craning their necks to see the action.

I moved here several months ago and the aggravations of the job were soon plain – the deadline (1pm on average) is horribly early. There is a fair amount of chasing up stories in the Washington Post or New York Times. But so were the rewards. Americans love to talk. Open a notebook or pick up the phone and they will give you an opinion, and normally in highly cogent, quotable form.

There is a belief that the fourth estate is a worthwhile institution, and there is much less of the suspicion widespread in Britain that journalists are merely waiting for an opportunity to turn over a source. For a newcomer in need of enlightenment and analysis, there are endless think-tank types who answer calls, and, what is more, often have experience of government.

Shortly after arriving I saw Hillary Clinton trounce her Democrat rivals at their first nationally televised debate in South Carolina. The following night she and her fellow candidates crammed onto a stage on the ground floor of a multi-storey car park to address an almost completely black crowd of party activists.

All the excitement then was about the new man, Obama, who had shocked the Clinton campaign by raising equal sums of money. The crowd gave him a deafening welcome, but when he had finished his speech the acclaim was not as loud.

Hillary, on the other hand, received a lesser reception, but when she had finished telling the crowd how they could join her in transforming America, they raised the roof. I had this gut feeling then that she would become president.

As a naive new arrival, I thought I might grab her or Obama for a quick word after the speech. A phalanx of minders put paid to that idea. But as ringside seats go it wasn’t bad, and I expect to have one at her inauguration as the United States’ 44th president.

Seymour Hersh gnaws through the Bush/Cheney case for the next Iraq in errr… Iran.