The brazen shoe throwing journalist in Iraq is now describing the incident as an “ungly act” and asking Iraqi PM Nouri al-Maliki for a pardon:

The jailed journalist who threw his shoes at President George W. Bush has asked for a pardon for what he described as “an ugly act,” a spokesman for Iraq’s prime minister said Thursday.

Muntadhar al-Zeidi, a correspondent for an Iraqi-owned television station based in Cairo, Egypt, could face two years imprisonment for insulting a foreign leader. He remained in custody Thursday night.

“It is too late to now to regret the big and ugly act that I perpetrated,” al-Zeidi wrote in a letter delivered to Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, according to the prime minister’s spokesman.

The spokesman, Yassin Majid, told The Associated Press that al-Zeidi went on in the letter to recall an interview he conducted with the prime minister in 2005 when al-Maliki invited him into his home, saying: “Come in, it is your home too.”

“So I ask for your pardon,” al-Zeidi wrote, Majid said.

The Iraqi PM can’t give al-Zeidi a pardon for something that has become so public, because it would set a terrible example. What that asshole did was a disgrace and an insult to America. No journalist would ever consider doing such a thing in any other country in the Middle East, because they would be killed. Ironically, it’s the very freedom that president Bush brought and al-Zeidi curses that allowed him to throw his shoes in the first place.

I think the guy is a scumbag and I hope the Iraqi police work him over good before they send him to prison.

It was quite an episode today when that disgraceful journalist in Iraq threw not one but two shoes at president Bush. Thankfully, the president’s quick reflexes allowed him to duck both shoes just barely. But the question I have is where in the hell was the Secret Service? That nut was able to throw a shoe, then wind up and throw a second shoe followed by at least a couple of seconds before he was tackled.

By my count it was more than 6 seconds before Bush’s lead Secret Service agent made it over to the president’s podium. Imagine if that had been a gun and not a shoe? Secret Service agents are supposed to be constantly scanning a crowd looking for unusual movement of any kind. How in the hell was that guy able to throw two shoes before anybody did anything?

What we saw today was a complete failure of the Secret Service to protect the president. The president casually waved off his lead agent who was about to extract him from the room following the incident. Had that been a gun, the president would have already been dead. That agent looked like a deer in headlights. The president should send that greenhorn back to the academy for a bit more training before he entrusts him with his life again.

Watch this video of the incident. Note the piss poor response time by the Secret Service: