I'm sure there is an abundance of riches here, meaningwise, but to single out one thread in particular, M. az-Zaydí's one-man circus means that the former al-‘Iráq has at last been restored to normalcy. So sing “Mission Accomplished!” if the spirit moves you.

The restoration is to a Greater Levant sort of normalcy, naturally, and not to the Vermont League of Women Voters sort. (But hey, let's take what we can get!)

Gen. Mubárak at Cairo and _les altesses royales du Ryad_ and all the rest of 'em would be perpetual targets for shoe-flinging street Arabs if they had not long since learned how to stay out of range.

Part of how to stay out of range is to have strict laws against defamation of the State on the books and make sure that these laws are enforced with exemplary vigour.

To ‘insult’ the ex-‘Iráqí (or any other Greater Levantine) State I take to involve defaming It to Its face, an offense of which M. az-Zaydí might possibly be acquitted on a technicality — depends on what he actually hollered — though any fool can see that he would have liked to do it.

Will there be a Stalinoid show trial? I'd guess there will not be, considering how young and precarious the neonormalcy of the former al-‘Iráq is. Mostly likely poor M. az-Zaydí will simply drop out of sight, either relegated to a sort of domestic ‘rendition’ or let out of his dungeon or Forward Operatin’ Base on condition that he promises never, ever to be heard from again.

Either way Human Rights Watch ought to try to watch it happen, but I doubt they will be able to.

HRW is a much greater threat to neonormalcy than isolated shoe-flinging individuals. If the present staff and management of “the Iraqi State” keep their eye on the ball, they will see that it is even more exemplary to make sure that HRW cannot interfere with their own GOP-given unaccountable liberty of management — which of course they will defend as ‘national’ ‘sovereignty’ — than to get back at Muntazar az-Zaydí personally. Later on, when (presumably) rather fewer of their subjects will passionately desire to throw things at them and at their paleface patrons, there will be time enough for that.

Supposing they do let him out, I guess M. az-Zaydí would do well to rush to London (for instance) and stay there for the next eighty-five years or so, just in case.

Merry days