Galloway v. the U.S. Senate

I haven’t seen any of the footage yet, but I’ve been reading about MP George Galloway’s testimony before a U.S. Senate Committee regarding the UN Oil for Food program. (A write up from the BBC is ) I have no idea about the substance of the discussion, but it seems pretty clear that as far as debating skills goes, Galloway just crucified the Senators, particularly Committee Chair Sen. Norm Coleman (R-MN). Which isn’t surprising — Members of Parliament get constant training in thinking on their feet and debating opponents. U.S. politicians always hide behind scripted photo ops.

Some highlights:

“I have met Saddam Hussein exactly the same number of times as Donald Rumsfeld met him. The difference is that Donald Rumsfeld met him to sell him guns and to give him maps the better to target those guns.”

“I was an opponent of Saddam Hussein when British and American governments and businessmen were selling him guns and gas.”

“You have nothing on me, Senator, except my name on lists of names from Iraq, many of which have been drawn up after the installation of your puppet government in Iraq.”

“The biggest sanctions busters were not me or Russian politicians or French politicians,” he said, “the real sanctions busters were your own companies with the connivance of your own government.”

“I have a rather better record of opposition to Saddam Hussein than you do, and than any member of the British or American governments do,” he told the committee.

It was Republican Mr Coleman who bore the brunt of the attack in one of the Senate’s most flamboyant confrontations. “Senator, in everything I said about Iraq, I turned out to be right and you turned out to be wrong,” he told the chairman, whom he labelled a “neo-con, pro-war hawk”.

Update 5/18/05 John Nichols provides us with more from Galloway. He declares Norm Coleman a fool for giving Galloway a forum. He says that Coleman made the mistake of confusing Galloway with an American politician who doesn’t have much to say and says it poorly. Galloway comes from the rough and tumble British Parliament.

(More in the extended entry)

The member of parliament tore through Coleman’s flimsy “evidence,” issuing an unequivocal denial that began, “Mr Chairman, I am not now, nor have I ever been an oil trader and neither has anyone been on my behalf. I have never seen a barrel of oil, owned one, bought one, sold one, and neither has anybody on my behalf.” He accused Coleman of being “remarkably cavalier with any idea of justice” and pointed out error after error in the report the senator had brandished against him.

For instance, Galloway noted that he had met Saddam twice — not the “many” times alleged by the report. “As a matter of fact I have met Saddam Hussein exactly the same number of times that (Secretary of Defense) Donald Rumsfeld met him,” said the recently reelected British parliamentarian. “The difference is that Donald Rumsfeld met him to sell him guns.”

For good measure, Galloway used the forum Coleman had foolishly provided to deliver a blistering condemnation of Coleman’s war.

“Now, Senator, I gave my heart and soul to oppose the policy that you promoted. I gave my political life’s blood to try to stop the mass killing of Iraqis by the sanctions on Iraq which killed one million Iraqis, most of them children, most of them died before they even knew that they were Iraqis, but they died for no other reason other than that they were Iraqis with the misfortune to born at that time. I gave my heart and soul to stop you committing the disaster that you did commit in invading Iraq. And I told the world that your case for the war was a pack of lies,” Galloway informed the fool on Capitol Hill.

“I told the world that Iraq, contrary to your claims did not have weapons of mass destruction. I told the world, contrary to your claims, that Iraq had no connection to al-Qaeda. I told the world, contrary to your claims, that Iraq had no connection to the atrocity on 9/11 2001. I told the world, contrary to your claims, that the Iraqi people would resist a British and American invasion of their country and that the fall of Baghdad would not be the beginning of the end, but merely the end of the beginning.

“Senator, in everything I said about Iraq, I turned out to be right and you turned out to be wrong and 100,000 people paid with their lives; 1600 of them American soldiers sent to their deaths on a pack of lies; 15,000 of them wounded, many of them disabled forever on a pack of lies.

“If the world had listened to (UN Secretary General)
Kofi Annan, whose dismissal you demanded, if the world had listened to (French) President Chirac, who you want to paint as some kind of corrupt traitor, if the world had listened to me and the anti-war movement in Britain, we would not be in the disaster that we are in today. Senator, this is the mother of all smokescreens. You are trying to divert attention from the crimes that you supported, from the theft of billions of dollars of Iraq’s wealth,” argued Galloway.

Then the Brit turned the tables on Coleman and steered the committee’s attention toward “the real Oil-for-Food scandal.”

“Have a look at the 14 months you were in charge of Baghdad, the first 14 months when $8.8 billion of Iraq’s wealth went missing on your watch. Have a look at Halliburton and other American corporations that stole not only Iraq’s money, but the money of the American taxpayer,” Galloway said.

“Have a look at the oil that you didn’t even meter, that you were shipping out of the country and selling, the proceeds of which went who knows where. Have a look at the $800 million you gave to American military commanders to hand out around the country without even counting it or weighing it. Have a look at the real scandal breaking in the newspapers today, revealed in the earlier testimony in this committee. That the biggest sanctions busters were not me or Russian politicians or French politicians. The real sanctions busters were your own companies with the connivance of your own Government.”

Compare that with the report from the discredited New York Times “reporter” Judith Miller. (You may recall that Miller was one-time stenographer for the lies of Ahmad Chalabi. She was instrumental in getting the American public worked up about Iraq’s formidable Weapons of Mass Destruction and their imminent nuclear program.) Anyway, Miller takes pains not to quote Galloway at any length, largely confining her quotation marks to “scare quotes” around terms Galloway used that were derogatory to proponents of invading Iraq.

Another update (5/18/05) Uncorrelated linked to this entry as an example of a lefty blog commenting on Galloway. I suppose in terms of national politics generally and the Iraq War in particular, its fair to characterize me as a lefty. (Though, I personally see myself as centrist with the national Republicans moving ever further to the right.) On matters of state & local finance, on the other hand, I regard myself as a fiscal conservative. For example, I’ve been very pleased about Mitch Daniels committment to balancing Indiana’s budget. I’m not happy about his choices in budget cuts, but that’s the trade off. At least he isn’t doing to Indiana’s budget what he had a hand in doing with the federal budget — blowing up our national debt as Bush’s budget director.

But, as to Uncorrelated’s specific comment:

Lots of lefty blogs enjoyed it too. I think a lot of these guys are setting themselves up for a fall in not being critical enough of Galloway–what will they do when its proved conclusively that Galloway took the money? Masson’s Blog is just one example.

I, for one, will be unfazed if Galloway is shown on tape in one of Saddam’s “pleasure palaces” taking a big wad of cash from Saddam himself and subsequently goes to jail because of it. I don’t know much about Galloway — really nothing before yesterday — and don’t care much. What I enjoyed was the fact that he was calling the U.S. Senators on the carpet for being so wrong about the Iraq War in the first place and for being disingenous and hypocritical about where they choose to look for corruption. The American run Coalition Provisional Authority is apparently unable to account for 8 billion dollars. That makes the UN Oil-for-food amounts look like chump change. Not to mention that Texas oil businesses are apparently being caught with their hand in the Oil-for-food cookie jar.

Sure, I guess I’d prefer the message come from an American politician who was pure as the driven snow. But, at this point, the message is of interest to me, not the messenger.

Update 5/20/05 I just came across this mention of how Galloway’s speech was covered in the U.S. press versus the British press. From Jefferson Morley in the Washington Post:

Virtually every British news site quoted Galloway’s riposte to the committee’s published allegation that he had met “many times” with Hussein. “As a matter of fact,” Galloway said according to the Times of London’s transcript, “I met Saddam Hussein exactly the same number of times as Donald Rumsfeld met him. The difference is that Donald Rumsfeld met him to sell him guns, and to give him maps the better to target those guns.”

Galloway was referring to two trips that Rumsfeld made to Iraq in 1983 and 1984. As a special U.S. envoy, Rumsfeld offered financial and military incentives to Hussein to reestablish diplomatic relations with the United States at a time when U.S. officials regarded Iran — with whom Iraq was engaged in a devastating war — as a greater threat.

(A telling difference between the British and American press: The Washington Post, New York Times and Los Angeles Times chose not to mention the Rumsfeld line in their coverage. Rumsfeld’s friendly overtures to Hussein 20 years ago have been reported before.)