The last time British MP George Galloway was accused of bad behaviour with regard to Saddam Hussein, he sued. And he won because the accusations were based on forged documents.
More recently it was Minnesota Senator Norm Coleman and the committee he chairs who accused Galloway of being involved in the oil-for-food scandal. Not only did Galloway deny the accusation, he insisted on going to Washington to deny it in person.
If you follow this link it will take you to a page at Information Clearing House where there's a video snippet of Galloway's testimony ready to play and a link to the full 47 minutes. I haven't watched the full version yet but the excerpt, running just under 4 minutes, is worth a look. Galloway kicks Coleman's ass.
If you'd prefer a more removed look at Galloway's testimony, you can visit the Financial Times which says that Galloway "stole the show."
Alternating between detailed rebuttal and sweeping denunciation, the MP derided the quality of the committee's evidence, his accusers' motives, and US policy in Iraq as a whole.He did not deny that Fawaz Zureikat, his colleague and the man alleged to be the go-between for his oil allocations, could have been involved in the oil trade, saying instead that he had always known he was involved in Iraqi business.
Neither did he have a ready explanation for Iraqi letters, provided by the committee, that referred to oil deals with Middle East ASI, Mr Zureikat's company, next to Mr Galloway's name in brackets. He merely said he had not seen the documents before, and raised the possibility they might be forgeries.
Mr Galloway was adamant he had not met Mr Hussein many times, as claimed, but ?twice?: the same number of times as Donald Rumsfeld, US defence secretary. He had long opposed Mr Hussein's dictatorship, even when ?British and American governments and businessmen were selling him guns and gas?.
He owned no company that could have made profits from trading Iraqi oil, and he cast doubt on the reliability of evidence given by Iraqi officials now held prisoner by the US. He derided the committee's references to a libel case with The Daily Telegraph, a UK newspaper, as a ?schoolboy howler?.
Mr Galloway also dismissed allegations that he was involved in paying bribes totalling hundreds of thousands of dollars to Mr Hussein as ?utterly preposterous?.
And on the central contention that Iraq had allocated him oil through two front companies Aredio Petroleum or Middle East ASI Mr Galloway had a simple question: ?Where's the money?? To that the committee had no answer.
But the video is more fun, especially when Galloway reviews all the ways he was right and Coleman and company were wrong.
What are the American papers saying about this? Not much.
CNN has a story on it. I don't see much else from the major North American media outlets.
I saw some of this on TV. Regardless of whether he had anything to hide, it was very entertaining!
Instead of the usual mealy-mouthed explanations we hear from politicians and lawyers (and in Canada, they're frequently one and the same), Mr. Galloway was clear and blunt in his denials. He managed to turn the argument back onto the Americans by pointing out many of their missteps in the decades-long Iraq debacle.
His Scottish brogue made it all the more amusing
That was beautiful...
I especially liked this bit:
"I was an opponent of Saddam Hussein when British and Americans governments and businessmen were selling him guns and gas. I used to demonstrate outside the Iraqi embassy when British and American officials were going in and doing commerce."
Echoes a point I often find myself making to war supporters who play the "anti-war=pro-Saddam" card. I was anti-Saddam since twenty five years ago. Ronald Reagan, now HE was pro-Saddam...
I saw it live on CNN. One of the best moments in political theater of the last dozen years. That's an honest-to-God liberal, unlike the whimps we have down here.