Everyone has heard by now about President Bush getting assaulted by a shoe-launching Iraqi journalist.

But as a special someone pointed out to me last night, everyone has missed the obvious question: What if this guy had thrown his shoes at Saddam Hussein or one of his political guests? In how many pieces would his body be right now? By how many men would his wife and sisters and daughters have been raped by now?

If anything, by throwing his shoes at his country's Prime Minister and at the leader of the free world who liberated Iraq, this man has taught us and the Arab world a thing or two about democracy.

Here are some videos from a couple of angles:

BBC has yet another angle with the President answering a question about the incident.

I have to say, the President has some excellent reflexes. And I love how he was smirking after the first shoe. Regardless of what you think of his politics, he's such a cool guy.

And by the way, the secret service gets a big fat "F" for this one. An Iraqi journalist and Iraqi security guards had the attacker kissing the ground before any of our secret service agents woke up from their naps. This must be the B-team. Is the A-team with Obama?

Anyway, so what happened after the incident? Too few reported on it:

Some Iraqi journalists stood up to apologise...

Bush said: "Thanks for apologising on behalf of the Iraqi people. It doesn't bother me. If you want the facts, it was a size 10 shoe that he threw".

One more thing. Just about every report I've seen on this goes out of its way to mention that "soles of shoes are considered the ultimate insult in Arab culture." I remember this little factoid infiltrating the media when Iraqis started beating the fallen Saddam statue with their shoes during the 2003 invasion. I really think the media's getting carried a way with it, with every reporter applying this cultured knowledge in every story involving Arabs and shoes.

As an Arab myself, I can tell you that Arabs don't go out of their way to insult people by planning shoe attacks. I mean yes, the soles of shoes are dirty, and they're hard. So they make good, dirty, hard weapons. And it's the best weapon this attacker had at his disposal - if you think about it, an MSNBC reporter in this position would also have decided that his shoe is the best weapon he is wearing. So, relax you overly-cultured reporters. The guy was trying to smack the President on the head with something hard, and he probably did it somewhat impulsively. I seriously doubt that he was thinking "oh yeah, yeah, that Bush is gonna be so insulted that I pointed the sole of a shoe in his general direction."