<img attachment="galloway.jpg" align="left" class="frame">A little while ago, the United States Senate invited British Parliamentarian George Galloway over the pond for a bit of a chat. They wanted to hear what he had to say about the accusations they'd made that he profited from the Oil for Food program in Iraq during sanctions. The U.S. media had naturally already weighed in and found him guilty supported by marginal circumstantial evidence. (He knew a guy who knew a guy ... what more do you need?) Galloway is by no means an angel, but after watching him <i>take our idiot Senate apart</i>, it's hard not to root for him. It's obvious from the proceedings that the illustrious members of our Senate are no longer used to dealing with anyone who hasn't either been pre-screened or is beholden to them in some way. <a href="http://www.plastic.com/comments.html;sid=05/05/18/07565471;cid=18" source="Plastic">Maverick Brit MP Sets US Senate On Fire</a> provides several choice quotes and links and here is the full <a href="http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,3-1616578_2,00.html" source="Time Online">Galloway v the US Senate: transcript of statement</a>. More links and information are available in <a href="http://www.heise.de/tp/r4/artikel/20/20133/1.html">"100.000 Tote für einen Haufen Lügen"</a> (de). <h>Transcript rundown</h> Near the beginning, he takes care of the Oil for Food allegations by pointing out that the preponderance of "evidence" in the Senate report is obviously falsified or plain wrong, as <iq>[t]here could possibly be no documents relating to Oil-for-Food matters in 1992, 1993, for the Oil-for-Food scheme did not exist at that time.</iq> In fact, he continued to point out that the documents used as proof by the Senate had been <iq>unmasked by the Christian Science Monitor ... as forgeries.</iq> Oops. Looks like our representatives are getting a little too accustomed to the U.S. court of opinion, where strength of belief is more important than veracity. Having gotten the accusations out of the way, he took his opportunity on the U.S. national stage to let loose with a summary of world opinion and a litany of facts that don't often see light on U.S. television. He disavowed personally profiting from the Oil for Food program - he was, in fact, a strong opponent of the entire sanctions regime imposed by the U.S. and Britain. Thereafter comes an segue into a precise and debilitating attack on U.S. policy that is rarely expressed with such eloquence and force. <bq quote_style="multiple">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 be 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. 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 <b>merely the end of the beginning</b>. 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.</bq> The Senate - if they are an intelligent hive-mind - will give more consideration to throwing stones in their glass mansion. More likely, they will constrain the limits of their echo-chamber ever more tightly, to prevent one such as Galloway from darkening their door and world view ever again. Galloway continued by flinging charges of corruption back at the senate's feet, detailing massive amounts of U.S. taxpayer money that have been lost to ineptitude, corruption or a combination of both: sums that dwarf any purported profits made from the Oil for Food program. The Senate is happy to scrabble after crumbs of guilt in other nations, all the while ignoring the massive "inefficiencies" in their own system. <bq quote_style="multiple">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 Haliburton and other American corporations that stole not only Iraq's money, but the money of the American taxpayer. 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. <b>The real sanctions busters were your own companies with the connivance of your own Government.</b> (emphasis added)</bq> He's been active in Mid-East politics and business for decades and scathingly compared how he'd spent his time there as opposed to the current Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld: <bq>As a matter of fact, I have met Saddam Hussein exactly the same number of times as Donald Rumsfeld met him. The difference is Donald Rumsfeld met him to sell him guns and to give him maps the better to target those guns. I met him to try and bring about an end to sanctions, suffering and war, and on the second of the two occasions, I met him to try and persuade him to let Dr Hans Blix and the United Nations weapons inspectors back into the country --- a rather better use of two meetings with Saddam Hussein than your own Secretary of State for Defence made of his.</bq> <h>Video</h> It's fun to watch the <a href="http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article8869.htm">Galloway video</a> (it's also available from links at the transcript page); choice moments not in the truncated trasncript include: <ul> When he said that <iq>the Oil for Food program was infanticide masquerading as public policy</iq>, Senator Coleman snickered and Galloway snapped at him that it was no laughing matter. When the Senator carefully explains to Galloway how self-respecting businessmen and political office hopefuls examine each dollar donated and earned, immediately returning it if it comes from a potentially dirty source. Really Senator? Tell me more of this utopia you call American politics ... it sounds positively wonderful. </ul>