Bush Holds ‘No Hard Feelings’ for Baghdad Shoe Incident

John D. McKinnon reports on the White House. Shoe jokes, continued. At today’s White House press briefing, spokeswoman Dana Perino led off by joking that for reporters, “the shoe check-in policy and check-out policy will begin tomorrow.” Sporting a slightly blackened right eye – from a microphone boom that got knocked into her face during Sunday’s melee in Baghdad – Perino also said that White House officials “hold no hard feelings” toward the Iraqi journalist who hurled his shoes at President Bush and called him a “dog” in a display of anger and contempt for American policy at a news conference Sunday in Baghdad. Perino also sought to minimize the incident’s security significance, saying it “was just a shoe,” and that Bush never felt threatened. He was “satisfied he was well protected,” she said. As for its broader implications, she repeated Bush’s contention that it shouldn’t be taken as “representative of the people of Iraq.” (link)