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Originally posted by Gorgo

I'm "cockahoop" over Galloway's performance. See:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Stor...25,00.html?=rss

This article is quite a bit different from the article at http://edition.cnn.com/2005/POLITIC...food/index.html

'George Galloway today accused US senators of manufacturing "the mother of all smokescreens" as he defended himself from charges that he profited from Iraqi oil sales.
The anti-war Respect MP for Bethnal Green and Bow, in east London, told the Senate subcommittee it had made a "schoolboy howler" in its investigation of illegal Iraqi oil sales. He said it was attempting to divert attention from the aftermath of the US-led invasion of Iraq.'


View it all at:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/media/avdb/ne...153_bb_16x9.asx

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Originally posted by filthy

I've only read about him a bit but that small study has impressed me. I wonder if we could convince him to immigrate?

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Saturday, May 21, 2005; Page A18

IN A SENSE, the showdown between George Galloway, the antiwar British member of Parliament accused of receiving "oil allocations" from former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein, and Sen. Norm Coleman (R-Minn.), chairman of the investigations subcommittee that made the accusation, was a classic clash of British and American political cultures. Mr. Galloway did what many British politicians do well: He used fiery rhetoric and clever phrases, calling the committee "a group of Christian fundamentalist and Zionist activists" in advance of his testimony, then accusing Mr. Coleman in the Senate of inventing the "mother of all smokescreens," deliberately designed to "divert attention from the crimes you supported" in Iraq. He denounced the prewar sanctions, the U.S. occupation, President Bush and Halliburton, apparently shocking senators accustomed to significantly higher levels of deference.

What Mr. Galloway failed to do, however, was directly answer the charges made against him in the subcommittee's report, collected and compiled in wonkish, earnest American fashion by Senate staffers and officials working in Iraq, or discredit their work overall. It is true, as Mr. Galloway stated, that documents formerly used to allege his guilt have not held up in court. But the Senate staff did not rely on these or on an infamous Iraqi newspaper article that placed Mr. Galloway's name on a long list of oil allocation recipients. Their documentation comes, rather, from commercial invoices and other documents from the Iraqi oil ministry archives, as well as the testimony of current Iraqi oil company administrators and former regime officials. Much of it centers around the activity of Jordanian businessman Fawaz Zureikat, Mr. Galloway's representative in Baghdad. Mr. Zureikat's name appears in multiple documents as a recipient of oil. He is also recorded as a major donor to a charity run by Mr. Galloway. Mr. Galloway dismissed the idea that any of this might be relevant to his own case.

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