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"This is a gift from the Iraqis. This is the farewell kiss, you dog," Muntadar al-Zeidi shouted in Arabic as he threw his shoe at Bush during a news conference with Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki. The shoe narrowly missed the president's head.

The man, a correspondent for Al-Baghdadia television, an Iraqi-owned station based in Cairo, then pulled off his other shoe and chucked it, yelling, "This is from the widows, the orphans and those who were killed in Iraq."

Bush ducked again as al-Maliki put out his arm to block the shoe.

Secret Service and Iraqi security agents pounced on al-Zeidi. They wrestled him to the ground before dragging him from the room.

An Iraqi government official says al-Zeidi is being held for questioning by Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's guards and is being tested for alcohol and drugs.

The official tells The Associated Press that Muntadar al-Zeidi is being interrogated over whether anybody paid him to throw his shoes at Bush.

Video showed a Secret Service agent rushing to the podium to move him out of harm's way, but Bush motioned to him that it was OK. The agent backed away.

Bush brushed off the incident. "It's like going to a political rally and have people yell at you. It's a way for people to draw attention," the president said.

To Iraqis, the incident represented a major insult to the U.S. president.

"In traditional Middle Eastern societies, it's very rude to show someone the bottom of your feet. Throwing a shoe at someone is very much a way of saying, 'You're beneath me. … I hold you in contempt,' " says Daniel Byman, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution's Saban Center for Middle East Policy.

The president described the incident as a "bizarre moment" and compared it to the disruption of his White House news conference with President Hu Jintao of China by a Falun Gong follower. He said it would be wrong to extrapolate from the single instance the feelings of the entire country.

"I don't think you can take one guy and say this represents a broad movement in Iraq," he said while on a flight to Afghanistan after his departure from Baghdad on Sunday night. "The war is not over," Bush said, but "it is decisively on its way to being won."

He said the other Iraqi journalists in the room "were very apologetic and said this doesn't represent the Iraqi people."

Nearly 150,000 U.S. servicemembers remain in Iraq, protecting the fragile democracy. More than 4,209 members of the U.S. military have died.

Al-Maliki, who spoke before the shoe incident, praised progress: "Today, Iraq is moving forward in every field."

Bush joked about the incident following his departure from Baghdad while en route to Afghanistan for a rally with U.S. and foreign troops. "I didn't know what the guy said, but I saw his sole," he said.

Bush told reporters he is normally pretty good at ducking at a news conference, as in ducking questions.

A reporter for CBS Radio responded, "So you aren't a lame duck," which prompted laughter.

Iraqis famously slapped their shoes on a toppled statue of Saddam Hussein in Firdos Square here shortly after the city fell to coalition troops in April 2003.

In 2004, after four American contractors were ambushed and killed in Fallujah, insurgents hanged two corpses from a bridge as people flailed at them with shoes.

The president's father also had been the target of Iraqi disrespect. After the Persian Gulf War, Saddam installed a tile mosaic floor depicting George H.W. Bush in the lobby of Baghdad's Al-Rashid Hotel. Western diplomats, businessmen and journalists had no choice but to walk over the 41st president's image.

U.S. soldiers have since removed the mosaic from the hotel in the Green Zone. They still use the Al-Rashid.

Contributing: Peter Eisler in McLean, Va., and the Associated Press