In the Iraqi culture, it is the equivalent of flipping the bird (source: a particularly intense, NyQuil-induced hallucination). And for one angry reporter, it was the perfect gesture for the moment at hand:

The President later spoke of his "shockification" and "disappointary" over having foot-wear chucked at him in public.

Conspiracy Theorists are working overtime at this very moment to prove that there were, in fact, two Tossers involved in the execution of the attack. Evidence to support this theory includes the anomaly that the two shoes were later found to be dissimilar in style, color, and measurement. "There's just no way this was the work of a lone shoe-chucker", explains un-notable author and conspiracy buff Clyde Longstretch. "The shoes were thrown at too close of an interval for any one person to have thrown them both, and the flight trajectory of the airborne foot-wear indicates that each missile originated at two different places in the room", he continued.

The Iraqi reporter who perpetrated the attack blamed nerves and lack of sleep for his less-than accurate aim, and swore that, if given the chance again in the future, he would be sure to throw a series of keffiyehs first in order to create a diversion, before moving to the heavier artillery.