Zaidi, a 30-year-old, Shia Muslim televison correspondent who had reported extensively on the victims of the war, told a Baghdad court in February that he instinctively threw his shoes - shouting "This is your farewell kiss, you dog!" - after hearing Bush praise the "achievements" in Iraq.

"While he was talking I was looking at all his achievements in my mind. More than a million killed, the destruction and humiliation of mosques, violations against Iraqi women, attacking Iraqis every day and every hour," he said. "...I felt the blood of the innocent people bleeding from beneath his feet."
In the days that followed, Zaidi languished in jail and was reportedly tortured. But he became a hero to thousands of Iraqis enraged by the American occupation. Amidst demands for his release, restaurants were renamed for him, banners were hung, graffiti appeared on concrete barriers. Demonstrating the human capacity for creativity in the face of adversity, an online game, Sock and Awe, to date has given Iraqis the chance to throw 88,997,757 shoes at Bush's face.

Thursday's sentencing came in a courtroom under heavy guard, with little media coverage. When Zaidi was convicted of assaulting a foreign leader, there was chaos. Some of Zaidi's relatives collapsed; others called prosecutors "sons of dogs." Defense lawyers, who had pointed out the obvious - "It wasn't a rocket, it was a shoe" - said they would appeal.

Zaidi had called his act "a natural response to the occupation." He showed remarkable restraint.

Still, Zaidi is only one victim of an ongoing, increasingly unheralded catastrophe that has become the norm, writes Anthony Shadid in the aftermath of Tuesday's bombing at a crowded vegetable market in Abu Ghraib. He describes a grisly scene - limbs in bags, bodies under dirt, a 12-year-old boy in agony - that has become yet one more "symbol of death's anonymity."

Lest we forget: We have unleashed an abiding nightmare in Iraq. To re-invent it in Afghanistan is insane.