All hail al-Zaidi

There was never a better reason to throw a shoe:

Zaidi, whose unusual protest overshadowed Bush's final visit to Iraq, insisted he had not planned the December attack.

Instead, he said, Bush's smile as he talked about achievements in Iraq enraged him as he thought of "the killing of more than a million Iraqis, the disrespect for the sanctity of the mosques and houses, the rapes of women.

"He was talking and at the same time smiling icily at the (Iraqi) prime minister. He said to the prime minister that he was going to have dinner with him," Zaidi told a three-judge panel, a small army of 25 defence lawyers lined up next to him.

"Suddenly, I saw no one in the room but Bush. I felt the blood of innocents was running under his feet while he was smiling coldly as if he had come to write off Iraq with a farewell meal."

Zaidi added: "After more than a million Iraqis killed, after all the economic and social destruction ... I felt that this person is the killer of the people, the prime murderer. I was enraged and threw my shoes at him."

At the time, Zaidi shouted at Bush that the shoe-throwing was a "goodbye kiss from the Iraqi people, dog."

One of the things I love about Toronto is that the Star publishes stories like this all the time.