Farewell kisses are often formal and unexciting courtesies observed as mere polite gestures. George Bush, however, was considered deserving of something special: he received an unforgettable and not-so-polite ‘goodbye’ on his secret and final visit to Iraq’s highly-fortified Green Zone in Baghdad. Having successfully ducked not one but two shoes hurled at him by an Iraqi TV journalist at a press conference, George later joked - at an impromptu press conference aboard Air Force One - that despite "not knowing what the guy said", he had in fact seen his attacker’s "sole", a pathetic pun on an earlier claim to have looked into Vladimir Putin’s eyes and seen his "soul". [Bush played God then; he declared what he saw was ‘good’.]

Muntazer al-Zaidi, the journalist who soon was sans footwear, made sure Bush understood the import of his heartfelt act. "This is a farewell kiss, you dog," he shouted as the first shoe got airborne. "And this is for the widows, the orphans and those who were killed in Iraq," were the words accompanying the second of his aerial ‘adieus’ to the unwelcome presence. [al-Zaidi was a pioneer of sorts; late-night comic Jay Leno dubbed him a ‘shoe-icide bomber’.]

It was equally obvious from the Air Force One press briefing that Bush was still blissfully ignorant of reality. When a pressman ventured to suggest that al-Zaidi was expressing a vein of anger that exists in Iraq, Bush demanded, "How do you know? I mean, how do we know what he’s expressing?" [Logical in the extreme, wouldn’t you say? Just one shoe might have suggested superficial affection, but two? The man was clearly bowled over.]

Robert Scheer, author of The Pornography of Power: How Defense Hawks Hijacked 9/11, felt the journalist’s words would stand "as the enduring epitaph in the region on Bush’s folly, which is the reality of his claimed legacy of success in the war on terror", and added it was also "a reminder that we have used much deadlier force than a shoe in the shock-and-awe invasion once celebrated in the American media as a means of building respect for democracy."

The Bush administration, besides subverting the US commitment to the rule of law and justice in Iraq, has also damaged America’s reputation for economic efficiency. A New York Times report on an unpublished 513-page federal history of the Iraq reconstruction, called it "a $100 billion failure by bureaucratic turf wars, spiraling violence and ignorance of the basic elements of Iraqi society and infrastructure."

No wonder then that the US is perceived as blundering bullies by so many in the region, said Scheer. "That an Iraqi journalist, whose family had been victimized by Saddam Hussein and who was kidnapped by insurgents while attempting to work as a TV reporter, came to so loathe the American President, as does much of the world, should serve as the final grade on the Bush administration. It should also serve as a caution to President-elect Barack Obama as he seeks to triangulate withdrawal from Iraq with an escalation of the far more treacherous attempt to conquer Afghanistan."

US politicians visiting Baghdad during the presidential campaign sought determinedly to manicure what American television viewers would see, wrote Patrick Cockburn in CounterPunch magazine. "Diplomats at the US embassy complained that staffers of Republican candidate Senator John McCain had asked them not to wear helmets and body armour when standing next to him in case these protective measures might appear to contradict his claim that the US was close to military victory. Periodically reality would break in, such as the time a mortar bomb exploded nearby the press conference hall at the very moment when UN Secretary General Ban ki-Moon was lauding security improvements, compelling him to cower down behind a display of artificial flowers."

Cockburn concluded that in Baghdad, Mr Bush could see for the first time in five years, in the shape of a pair of shoes hurtling towards him, what so many Iraqis really thought of him.

Columnist Dave Lindorff reckoned that "something just snapped" when the Iraqi journalist kept listening to Bush blather that his illegal invasion of Iraq had been necessary for US security, Iraqi stability and world peace. "He stopped taking the PresidentBS and called him what he is: a murderer and a criminal, with the blood of perhaps upwards of a million Iraqis on his hands."

Having said that, Lindorff proceeded to make a confession of his own. "I’ll admit, listening to Bush lie his way through eight years of press conferences, while pre-selected reporters played along and pretended to get his attention so they could ask questions which had been submitted and vetted in advance, I have felt like throwing my shoes at the television set."

This final ‘legacy tour’ by Bush was all part of an overall strategy, according to The Washington Post, and was devised two months ago at a meeting in the Oval Office, when White House counselor Ed Gillespie "began meeting with agency heads as part of an effort aimed at compiling the major accomplishments of the Bush administration."

The Los Angeles Times went one better and scooped two pages of ‘positive talking points’ that had been sent out to officials for inclusion in speeches and interviews. According to the Times, the memo stated the President had kept the American people safe after the September 11 terrorist attacks, lifted the economy after 2001 through tax cuts, curbed AIDS in Africa and maintained ‘the honour and the dignity of his office’.

Speaking truth to power, was how one blogger described the episode. "It’s easy to criticize the act as childish but how does a traumatized and abused nation act in accordance with the rules of etiquette in the face of so much innocent slaughter?"

John Dickerson, in Slate magazine, wondered if the flying shoes were a sign that the freedom Bush wanted so much to bring to Iraq was indeed flourishing. "My guess is that a lot of Americans will see the shoe al-Zaidi threw but not hear the words he spoke. And if they do hear, they won’t linger over what he said. They’ll marvel instead at the President’s quick reflexes."

Both supporters and opponents of the Iraq war, Dickerson noted, found in the airborne shoe cathartic expression of their own views. "Opponents said: ‘Not even the people this war was supposed to help view it as a success. Bush is still a pariah in Iraq.’ Proponents said: ‘The fact that al-Zaidi felt free enough to throw his shoe shows that this war has been a success. Had he done that to Saddam Hussein, he would have been shot on sight’." [The imperious Dick Cheney provided the classic riposte to reach out for at such times: "So?"]

For good measure, Dickerson recalled that George’s press conference wasn’t even the first time a US President – and a Bush at that - had suffered a shoe-related ignominy in Iraq. After the 1991 Gulf War, Saddam installed a mosaic of Papa B on the floor of the Al-Rasheed Hotel and delighted in releasing photographs showing foreign dignitaries walking all over Papa’s face.

CNN called in an expert who pontificated that, in Iraqi culture, throwing your shoes at someone’s head is considered an insult.