The shoe-throwing incident becomes more surreal every day. Now an official spokesman for the Iraqi government says al-Zaidi may be charged with attempted murder. Attempted murder, for crying out loud!

The Iraqi television reporter who threw his shoes at President George W. Bush at a news conference appeared before a judge Tuesday and admitted “aggression against a president,” a judicial spokesman said.

The television reporter, Muntader al-Zaidi, became an instant sensation when he called Bush a “dog” at a news conference with Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki on Sunday and tried to hit him with both of his shoes.

“Zaidi was brought today before the investigating judge in the presence of a defense lawyer and a prosecutor,” said Abdul Satar Birqadr, a spokesman for Iraq’s High Judicial Council. “He admits the action he carried out.”

The court decided to keep Zaidi in custody. After the judge has completed his investigation the court may send him for trial under a clause in the Iraqi penal code that makes it an offense to attempt to murder Iraqi or foreign presidents. The sentence for such a crime could be up to 15 years in prison, Birqadr said.

George Bush, meanwhile, continues to pretend he has no idea what the Iraqis are doing and proposing to do to al-Zaidi:

I don’t know what they’re going to do – he’s – I’m not even sure what his status is. They shouldn’t overreact.

This prize twit obviously doesn’t realize that he could earn a lot of goodwill for himself by asking the Iraqi government to drop all charges and let al-Zaidi go free. And, of course, there’s no one who has his ear who can tell him, either. (The history of the world would probably have been very different if Bush had people in his inner circle who could actually tell him things from time to time.)