Don't Let The Shoes Hit You On the Way Out

It's not hard to gain some enjoyment from the sight of a bitter Iraqi journalist firing not one, but two shoes at the still-president of the United States.

One must truly admire the president's ability to duck projectiles, thrown hard, from close range, and with great accuracy.

And it might be easy, as it appears for our still-president, to laugh off the incident as just one of those things a president must endure. Everyone has critics, right?

But throwing shoes is a gesture of the highest disdain in the Arab world. And as he cursed George Bush for the crimes he's committed against his people, one might wonder if Bush really comprehends what he's done.

It's too easy to psychoanalyze a sitting president from the comfort and distance of my desk chair. But it's hard not to see a smart, but simple and incurious man blinded by the black-and-white comforts so easily swallowed by recovering alcoholic religious zealots.

And yet, how can a moral man of any stripe justify the conclusions reached by this recently released bi-partison Congressional report.

The president of the United States authorized torture. Plain and simple. Just like him.