"This is a farewell kiss from the Iraqi people, you dog," he yelled in Arabic while chucking his footwear at Bush. "This is for the widows and orphans and all those killed in Iraq," he managed to get out as the second shoe flew, before then-prime minister Nouri al-Maliki's bodyguards tackled him.

"When I threw the shoe in the face of the criminal, George Bush, I wanted to express my rejection of his lies, his occupation of my country, my rejection of his killing my people," he would later say. "My rejection of his plundering the wealth of my country, and destroying its infrastructure. And casting out its sons into a diaspora."