A protester uses his shoe to strike an effigy of U.S. President George. W. Bush, in an expression of contempt, as thousands of followers of Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr converged on Firdos Square in central Baghdad, Iraq for a mass prayer to protest a proposed U.S.-Iraqi security pact on Friday, Nov. 21, 2008.(AP Photo/Karim Kadim)

From the Associated Press:

BAGHDAD (AP) — Followers of a Shiite cleric on Friday stomped on and burned an effigy of President George W. Bush in the same central Baghdad square where Iraqis beat a toppled statue of Saddam Hussein with their sandals five years earlier.

Chanting and waving flags, thousands of Moqtada al-Sadr’s followers filled Firdos Square to protest a proposed U.S.-Iraqi security pact that would allow American troops to stay for three more years. The Bush effigy was placed on the same pedestal where U.S. Marines toppled the ousted dictator’s statue in one of the iconic images of the 2003 U.S.-led invasion.

It can’t be said often enough that the very people now filling the streets of Baghdad in protest against the U.S. occupation of Iraq are those who were most oppressed under Saddam Hussein’s regime. They are the ones Vice President Dick Cheney was thinking of when he predicted U.S. forces would be greeted as liberators.


UPDATE: Peter Juul of the Center for American Progress points out the obvious. The so-called status of forces agreement (SOFA) is not just an “executive-level agreement,” as the Bush administration claims. It’s a treaty that must be approved by the U.S. Senate:

[T]he SOFA is, in fact, a treaty committing the United States to act in the defense of Iraq if its security is threatened. Even if it does not rise to the level of a firm security guarantee, the SOFA’s language is close enough to a treaty that Congress should have a say in it.

Related One Utah post: Neocon Insanity: Those Iraqi Ingrates (November 18)