Muntazar Al-Zaidi: Shoe-Throwing Sentence Reduced to One Year

And so the final chapters of the story of Muntazar al-Zaidi, the Iraqi journalist who threw his shoes at then US President George W. Bush in December 2008, are being played out.

Al-Zaidi's sentence was reduced from three years to one today by a Baghdad court. The presiding judge agreed with al-Zaidi's lawyers that the crime should be reduced from assault to insulting a foreign leader.

All very political and predictable. Al-Zaidi had to do some jail time (and take a beating) because of the Iraq Government's embarrassment. Now that Bush is an ex-President, however, all the fuss can be put away quietly.

And that quiet dismissal of the protest against the Bush Adminstration's treatment of Iraqis will undoubtedly succeed:  the irony is that the news of al-Zaidi's reduced sentence comes as the current US President, Barack Obama, makes a surprise visit to Baghdad and seizes tomorrow's headlines.