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This was the guy who took some $ from Saddam and then is trying to save his face by trashing your country?
Some patriot you are...
Democratic legislators with any backbone should take note. This is how you confront murderous thieves...
Galloway vs. The US Senate: Transcript of Statement
George Galloway, Respect MP for Bethnal Green and Bow, delivered this statement to US Senators today who have accused him of corruption
Common Dreams"Senator, I am not now, nor have I ever been, an oil trader. and neither has anyone on my behalf. I have never seen a barrel of oil, owned one, bought one, sold one - and neither has anyone on my behalf.
"Now I know that standards have slipped in the last few years in Washington, but for a lawyer you are remarkably cavalier with any idea of justice. I am here today but last week you already found me guilty. You traduced my name around the world without ever having asked me a single question, without ever having contacted me, without ever written to me or telephoned me, without any attempt to contact me whatsoever. And you call that justice.
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.
"Now I want to deal with the pages that relate to me in this dossier and I want to point out areas where there are - let's be charitable and say errors. Then I want to put this in the context where I believe it ought to be. On the very first page of your do ent about me you assert that I have had 'many meetings' with Saddam Hussein. This is false.
"I have had two meetings with Saddam Hussein, once in 1994 and once in August of 2002. By no stretch of the English language can that be described as "many meetings" with Saddam Hussein.
"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 Defense made of his.
"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.
"You will see from the official parliamentary record, Hansard, from the 15th March 1990 onwards, voluminous evidence that I have a rather better record of opposition to Saddam Hussein than you do and than any other member of the British or American governments do.
"Now you say in this do ent, you quote a source, you have the gall to quote a source, without ever having asked me whether the allegation from the source is true, that I am 'the owner of a company which has made substantial profits from trading in Iraqi oil'.
"Senator, I do not own any companies, beyond a small company whose entire purpose, whose sole purpose, is to receive the income from my journalistic earnings from my employer, Associated Newspapers, in London. I do not own a company that's been trading in Iraqi oil. And you have no business to carry a quotation, utterly unsubstantiated and false, implying otherwise.
"Now 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 Baghdad. If you had any of the letters against me that you had against Zhirinovsky, and even Pasqua, they would have been up there in your slideshow for the members of your committee today.
"You have my name on lists provided to you by the Duelfer inquiry, provided to him by the convicted bank robber, and fraudster and conman Ahmed Chalabi who many people to their credit in your country now realize played a decisive role in leading your country into the disaster in Iraq.
"There were 270 names on that list originally. That's somehow been filleted down to the names you chose to deal with in this committee. Some of the names on that committee included the former secretary to his Holiness Pope John Paul II, the former head of the African National Congress Presidential office and many others who had one defining characteristic in common: they all stood against the policy of sanctions and war which you vociferously prosecuted and which has led us to this disaster.
"You quote Mr Dahar Yassein Ramadan. Well, you have something on me, I've never met Mr Dahar Yassein Ramadan. Your sub-committee apparently has. But I do know that he's your prisoner, I believe he's in Abu Ghraib prison. I believe he is facing war crimes charges, punishable by death. In these cir stances, knowing what the world knows about how you treat prisoners in Abu Ghraib prison, in Bagram Airbase, in Guantanamo Bay, including I may say, British citizens being held in those places.
"I'm not sure how much credibility anyone would put on anything you manage to get from a prisoner in those cir stances. But you quote 13 words from Dahar Yassein Ramadan whom I have never met. If he said what he said, then he is wrong.
"And if you had any evidence that I had ever engaged in any actual oil transaction, if you had any evidence that anybody ever gave me any money, it would be before the public and before this committee today because I agreed with your Mr Greenblatt [Mark Greenblatt, legal counsel on the committee].
"Your Mr Greenblatt was absolutely correct. What counts is not the names on the paper, what counts is where's the money. Senator? Who paid me hundreds of thousands of dollars of money? The answer to that is nobody. And if you had anybody who ever paid me a penny, you would have produced them today.
"Now you refer at length to a company names in these do ents as Aredio Petroleum. I say to you under oath here today: I have never heard of this company, I have never met anyone from this company. This company has never paid a penny to me and I'll tell you something else: I can assure you that Aredio Petroleum has never paid a single penny to the Mariam Appeal Campaign. Not a thin dime. I don't know who Aredio Petroleum are, but I daresay if you were to ask them they would confirm that they have never met me or ever paid me a penny.
"Whilst I'm on that subject, who is this senior former regime official that you spoke to yesterday? Don't you think I have a right to know? Don't you think the Committee and the public have a right to know who this senior former regime official you were quoting against me interviewed yesterday actually is?
"Now, one of the most serious of the mistakes you have made in this set of do ents is, to be frank, such a schoolboy howler as to make a fool of the efforts that you have made. You assert on page 19, not once but twice, that the do ents that you are referring to cover a different period in time from the do ents covered by The Daily Telegraph which were a subject of a libel action won by me in the High Court in England late last year.
"You state that The Daily Telegraph article cited do ents from 1992 and 1993 whilst you are dealing with do ents dating from 2001. Senator, The Daily Telegraph's do ents date identically to the do ents that you were dealing with in your report here. None of The Daily Telegraph's do ents dealt with a period of 1992, 1993. I had never set foot in Iraq until late in 1993 - never in my life. There could possibly be no do ents relating to Oil-for-Food matters in 1992, 1993, for the Oil-for-Food scheme did not exist at that time.
"And yet you've allocated a full section of this do ent to claiming that your do ents are from a different era to the Daily Telegraph do ents when the opposite is true. Your do ents and the Daily Telegraph do ents deal with exactly the same period.
"But perhaps you were confusing the Daily Telegraph action with the Christian Science Monitor. The Christian Science Monitor did indeed publish on its front pages a set of allegations against me very similar to the ones that your committee have made. They did indeed rely on do ents which started in 1992, 1993. These do ents were unmasked by the Christian Science Monitor themselves as forgeries.
"Now, the neo-con websites and newspapers in which you're such a hero, senator, were all absolutely -a-hoop at the publication of the Christian Science Monitor do ents, they were all absolutely convinced of their authenticity. They were all absolutely convinced that these do ents showed me receiving $10 million from the Saddam regime. And they were all lies.
"In the same week as the Daily Telegraph published their do ents against me, the Christian Science Monitor published theirs which turned out to be forgeries and the British newspaper, Mail on Sunday, purchased a third set of do ents which also upon forensic examination turned out to be forgeries. So there's nothing fanciful about this. Nothing at all fanciful about it.
"The existence of forged do ents implicating me in commercial activities with the Iraqi regime is a proven fact. It's a proven fact that these forged do ents existed and were being circulated amongst right-wing newspapers in Baghdad and around the world in the immediate aftermath of the fall of the Iraqi regime.
"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.
“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 Kofi Annan, whose dismissal you demanded, if the world had listened to 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.
"Have a look at 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.
"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."
Worldclass smackdown!
This was the guy who took some $ from Saddam and then is trying to save his face by trashing your country?
Some patriot you are...
When did the presumption of innocence die in the U.S.? Sept 11th perhaps?
SKY NewsGeorge Galloway will arrive home confident he won the showdown with US senators who accused him of profiting from Iraq's oil-for-food scandal.
The Respect MP said he was "absolutely" convinced he had been vindicated from the allegations. He was accused of receiving vouchers for 20 million barrels of oil from Saddam Hussein's regime.
"These people think they can smear people without them having the right to speak back and this time I got that right and I knocked them for six," he said.
Mr Galloway's appearance before the US Senate committee on investigations was largely lauded by pundits in the US, who deemed his impassioned defence a success.
The former Labour MP, as promised, used the platform to denounce who he claimed were "the villains of the piece" in Iraq - the US government.
He clearly stated that at no point had he ever seen, bought or sold a barrel of oil and neither had anyone on his behalf.
"They didn't have a leg to stand on," he said.
"All they had was my name on a bit of paper and that just isn't good enough."
The MP, re-elected this month in Bethnal Green and Bow, said he felt his work was done with Republican committee chairman Norm Coleman and his colleagues.
He said he would be back in the House of Commons immediately to carry on the work he had been elected to do.
Well, since that presumption doesn't extend outside the court of law, I'd say it's irrelevant in this case and those of the extra-territorial detainees.
Just because the Bush adminstration has chosen itself as the worlds terrara st' judge, jury and executioner doesn't mean that they have a right to hurl unfounded accusations at civilians of our only military ally still left in Iraq. Especially when those accusations seem to be based on forgeries...
Link:News From RussiaThe central do ent used against George Galloway this week by the US senate committee investigating Iraq's oil for food programme is a forgery. Socialist Worker can reveal that evidence crucial to the alleged case against the Respect MP is fake - created after the fall of Baghdad in 2003.
The allegations are another desperate attempt to smear the opponents of the war on Iraq, and to make them appear as the corrupt hirelings of tyranny.
In Britain the material is another dirty weapon to be employed in an effort to destroy George Galloway and halt the rise of Respect.
Most of the accusations hurled against George Galloway by the senate committee on investigations this week were based on testimony that was supposedly freely given by former officials in Saddam Hussein's regime who are now held by US forces.
Sure it does...don't kid yourself.
No, don't kid yourself. Not everyone thinks the way this NeoCon adminstration thinks and someday there will be accountability for some of the drastic measures that this administration has taken in this war on terror.Sure it does...don't kid yourself.
Wayne Madsen on George Galloway and the oil-for-food scandal...
Online JournalThe charges brought by Coleman's committee largely rehashed the original accusations contained in the MEMRI-laundered do ents. Those same MEMRI do ents contained the names of French Senator and former Interior Minister Charles Pasqua, who was also cited in the Coleman Committee do ents. Other recipients named in the MEMRI-tainted do ents included the very same Russian political parties and leaders mentioned in the Coleman Committee report, including Vladimir Zhironovsky's Russian Liberal Democratic Party. Even an adviser to anti-war Pope John Paul II, French priest Father Jean-Marie Benjamin, was implicated in the MEMRI do ents. Benjamin was accused of accepting 4.5 million barrels of oil because he arranged a meeting between Tariq Aziz, an Iraqi Christian, and the pope. Benjamin is secretary general of the Assisi-based Beato Angelica Foundation and once served as a special events official for UNICEF where he collaborated with the late actors Peter Ustinov and Audrey Hepburn.
In addition to anti-Iraq war political parties, politicians, and businessmen in France, Russia, Britain, Indonesia, Syria, Jordan, Turkey, Serbia, Canada, Lebanon, Palestine, Brazil, Egypt, India, South Africa, Italy, Romania, Slovakia, Switzerland, Kenya, Libya, Malaysia, Morocco, Netherlands, China, Vietnam, Yemen, Nigeria, Sudan, Thailand, Tunisia, Pakistan, Chad, Myanmar, Belarus, Austria, and Ukraine, U.S. politicians who opposed the Iraqi war were also implicated because they supposedly (according to the neocon spin machine of newspapers and websites) accepted campaign contributions from Al-Khafajji. Among Al-Khafajji's recipients were Michigan Democrats Carl Levin, David Bonior, and John Conyers, as well as Bill Clinton and Al Gore's 1996 presidential campaign. The neocons claimed that all five Democratic leaders were involved in the Oil-for-Food scandal by association with Al-Khafajji's political donations.
According to the Calgary Sun, Canadian Arthur Milholland, the CEO of Calgary-based Oilexco (which allegedly received 9.6 million barrels of oil from Saddam), directly implicated MEMRI in the forgeries of the do ents used by the Telegraph and Al Mada (also cited by the Coleman committee). He told the paper, MEMRI "has some motives." Leith Shbeilat, chairman of the anti-corruption committee of the Jordanian Parliament was alleged to have received 15.5 million barrels of oil from Saddam. It is noteworthy that Shbeilat heads a committee that has jurisdiction over calls to have current Iraqi Oil Minister Ahmad Chalabi extradited to Jordan to serve a long prison sentence for his conviction for embezzling $300 million from the collapsed Petra Bank of Jordan, the third largest bank in the country.
Galloway testified that Coleman, a lawyer, had been "cavalier with justice" in his investigation and accusations. Galloway also noted several errors in the committee do ents and report. He said he met with Saddam twice—in 1994 and August 2002—and that did not cons ute "many meetings" as stated in the Republican majority report. Galloway said he met with Saddam as many times as Donald Rumsfeld. However, Galloway said while that he met with Saddam to avert war, Rumsfeld met with Saddam "to sell him guns and give him maps."
When Coleman accused Galloway of being an outspoken supporter of Saddam's regime, Galloway responded by emphasizing that he condemned Saddam in outspoken terms and provided the committee with a dossier containing Hansard parliamentary records of those denunciations. Galloway said he had a better record of opposition to Saddam than Coleman or "any other member of the American or British governments."
Galloway also criticized Coleman for quoting an unnamed source without finding out if the allegations were true. He asked Coleman, "Who is this senior former official? Don't I or the committee or the public have a right to know?" In a dramatic moment, Galloway thundered, "You have nothing on me, senator, other than my name on lists from your puppet government in Iraq." Galloway added, "Knowing how you treat prisoners, I'm not sure how much credibility can be placed on the statements of prisoners." He said, "Iraq never paid a cent to me or to Mariam's Appeal."
Galloway said that one of the Coleman committee's most serious mistakes was stating that its alleged newly discovered do ents covered a different period of time than the Daily Telegraph 2001 do ents. He pointed out that the Telegraph do ents covered 2001 and that they dated identically to the do ents in the committee's report. Galloway stated that the Christian Science Monitor published do ents from 1992 and 1993 alleging that Galloway accepted Iraqi oil money but that these were unmasked as forgeries. Although the 1992 and 1993 do ents were said to deal with the Oil-for-Food program, Galloway emphasized that the program did not exist then. However, Galloway said that neocon websites and papers were "all -a-hoot over the do ents," later proven to be forgeries.
Galloway said the case for war was "a pack of lies" and that the Coleman committee hearings was the "mother of all smoke screens" to divert attention away from the real Oil-for-Food scandal. He said that Halliburton had stolen Iraq's money and that $8 billion of Iraq's wealth had been stolen since the war. In addition, Galloway pointed out that $800 million in cash was given out in Iraq by U.S. military commanders. Galloway told the committee that the "real sanctions busters were your own companies and politicians."
Galloway was correct in criticizing the Coleman committee for not concentrating on U.S. violations of Iraqi sanctions and pay-offs to Saddam in the Oil-for-Food program. The U.S. oil companies involved in the sanctions busting have long-standing connections to the Bush family and their largest corporate benefactors.
The Democratic minority report stated, "From 2000 to 2002, Bayoil (USA), Inc., and its affiliates, operating out of Houston, Texas, became one of the largest importers of Iraqi oil into the United States." The report also states, "Samir Vincent, an Iraq-born American, obtained Iraqi oil allocations through his company Phoenix International LLC (McLean, Virginia), and sold them to Chevron Products Company, a division of Chevron USA, Inc."
Federal authorities later indicted Vincent for his role in the oil-for-food scheme. Vincent pleaded guilty. Vincent was a close confidante of 1996 Republican Vice Presidential candidate Jack Kemp, who had opposed the Iraqi sanctions. Newsweek magazine reported that in October 2004, the FBI interviewed Kemp about his relationship with Vincent.
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice sat on the board of Chevron before she joined the Bush White House as National Security Adviser. The company named one of its oil supertankers the SS Condoleezza Rice.
Bayoil is incorporated in the Bahamas with affiliates in Switzerland and Luxembourg. A Chilean-Italian named Augusto Giangrandi, a resident of Florida, served as chairman of Bayoil. Although Bayoil principals David Chalmers, Jr., Briton John Irving, and Ludmil Dionissiev, a Bulgarian citizen and permanent resident of Houston, were indicted, Giangrandi was not touched.
Giangrandi has a history that goes back to the Iran-Iraq war when Donald Rumsfeld was helping to arm Saddam and when the Reagan-Bush administration was violating UN arms sanctions imposed against both warring parties. During the war, Iraq bought hundreds of millions of dollars worth of cluster bombs and other weapons from Carlos Cardoen, a Chilean arms manufacturer who was close to Chilean dictator General Augusto Pinochet. In 1983, Cardoen hired Giangrandi, then a resident of Florida, to ship zirconium from the United States to Iraq. Zirconium is used in the manufacture of cluster bombs. Giangrandi falsely stated in his expert license application that the zirconium would be used for mining explosives in Chile. Giangrandi also owned Cosmos of Livorno, Italy, the manufacturer of mini-submarines and served as president of Swisstech, Cardoen's marketing unit.
According to a 1995 deposition by Howard Teicher, a Reagan National Security Council official, Cardoen was working for the CIA to illegally ship military hardware to Saddam. Giangrandi's operation was part of a much larger criminal conspiracy involving agricultural loans guaranteed by the Department of Agriculture's Commodity Credit Corporation and funded by Italy's Banca Nazionale del Lavoro (BNL). The failed Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI) (also known as the Bank of Crooks and Criminals International) had connections to both BNL and Ahmad Chalabi's Petra Bank. In 1992, The Wall Street Journal reported that George W. Bush and Jeb Bush had been named as potential witnesses in the class action lawsuit brought about the clients of BCCI who had been defrauded in the bank's collapse. During the time, George W. was involved in various failed oil companies in Houston and Jeb, operating from a base in Miami, was involved in su ious real estate deals.
There was another Florida connection to the illegal arms shipments to Iraq. Iraqi arms dealer Ishan Barbouti worked with Iran-contra felon Richard Secord to secretly ship large amounts of cyanide from Product Ingredient Technologies, a food-flavoring factory in Florida, to Iraq for use in Saddam's nerve gas production during the 1980s. All of these transactions involving Bayoil's Giangrandi, Cardoen, Secord, and Barbouti, were known to President George H. W. Bush and Secretary of State James Baker.
Between 1990 and 1991, three journalists who were investigating various aspects of Cardoen's secretive arms trading activities were found dead in su ious cir stances. They were freelance writer Danny Casolaro, found dead from wrist slashes in a bathtub in a Martinsburg, West Virginia, hotel; Lawrence Ng, a stringer for the Financial Times, found shot to death in the bathtub of his apartment in Guatemala City; and Jonathan Moyle, a British aviation journalist found hanging in the closet of his hotel room in Santiago, Chile. Moyle had uncovered details of Cardoen's role in the Bush 41 deal to illegally ship weapons to Iraq.
Under the Oil-for-Food program, the Saddam regime was charging a hefty surcharge per barrel of oil—money that went directly into the bank accounts of Saddam and his closest officials. According to the Democratic minority report, while French company TotalFinaElf objected to paying the surcharge, American companies like ExxonMobil and Texaco began to acquire Iraqi oil through third parties that were paying the surcharge. These third parties included Bayoil.
In mid-February 2003, just weeks from the onset of the U.S. invasion of Iraq, oil tankers began loading Iraqi crude at the Iraqi port of Khor al-Amaya. The Bush administration-approved sanction-busting oil shipments involved a Jordanian company named Millenium, owned by the Shaheen Business Investment Group and a Connecticut-based shipbroker called Odin Marine, Inc. Oil tankers were permitted to off load their oil at the UAE port of Fujairah for reshipment on larger tankers without any interference from the U.S. Navy-led Maritime Interdiction Force (MIF), set up to enforce the sanctions. Giangrandi's company, Italtech, was involved in a number of the shipments as a U.N. contract holder (lifter).
When Iraq's Oil Minister expressed his su ion that the oil shipments would never get by the U.S. Navy defenses, a mysterious high-ranking visitor told him the Iraqi oil was "for the sake of the people who work for the defense of the United States. It will pass through safely." When the unknown visitor later asked for additional oil shipments from Khor al-Amaya he assured the minister that "you will never hear about this in the press any more. The U.S. forces will make them be quiet."
Millennium chartered seven ships through Odin. Shipping communications obtained by the committee proved that the tankers traveled with the full knowledge and acquiescence of the Maritime Interdiction Force, then under the command of a U.S. naval officer, Commander Harry French. The MIF permitted all the ships loading oil from Khor al-Amaya to leave the Gulf without interference. Odin became concerned about the legality of the shipments and eventually contacted U.S. State Department official Amy Schedlebauer. Two hours after Odin's general counsel contacted Schedlebauer, she responded in an e-mail: 'AWARE OF THE SHIPMENTS AND HAS DETERMINED NOT TO TAKE ACTION."
Coleman and Levin wrote a February 8, 2005, letter to Rumsfeld asking about the operations of the Maritime Interdiction Force in the Gulf prior to the war. A similar letter was sent to the State Department inquiring about the illegal Khor al-Amaya oil shipments. To date, the committee has not received an answer from either Rumfeld or Rice.
Minority report do ents indicate that one of the largest recipients of Bayoil Iraqi oil shipments was Enron, the bankrupt company that served as a virtual slush fund for the political campaigns of George H. W. Bush, George W. Bush, and California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger.
Accusing your prosepective accusers is a popular Republican strategy of avoidance.
What do you do when someone testifying before you has the gull to actually speak their mind? Well, if your a Republican you have his testimony purged...
[QUOTE]Galloway Senate testimony PDF goes AWOL
Evidence 'missing' from Committee website
Iain Thomson, vnunet.com 20 May 2005
VNUNetThe website for the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Government Affairs has removed testimony from UK MP George Galloway from its website.
All other witness testimonies for the hearings on the Oil for Food scandal are available on the Committee's website in PDF form. But Galloway's testimony is the only do ent not on the site.
"I have met Saddam Hussein exactly the same number of times as Donald Rumsfeld met him," Galloway told the Committee.
"The difference is that Donald Rumsfeld met him to sell him guns and to give him maps the better to target those guns."
It true, this is what the site says:
Panel 2
George Galloway , Member of Parliament for Bethnal Green and Bow , Great Britain
Mr Galloway did not submit a statement
Here's an interesting theory on the possible misunderestimated strategerie of goading Galloway into testifying before the U.S. Congress...
The testimony of George Galloway before the US Senate has gone missing. According to VUNet:
The Senate Committee website itself has these terse entries, here reproduced verbatim which does not say that the testimony has been removed but that "Mr Galloway did not submit a statement".The website for the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Government Affairs has removed testimony from UK MP George Galloway from its website. All other witness testimonies for the hearings on the Oil for Food scandal are available on the Committee's website in PDF form. But Galloway's testimony is the only do ent not on the site. ... Press representatives for the Committee had no comment.
The declaration that "Mr Galloway did not submit a statement" is curious given the fact that he spoke for 47 minutes before the Senate, a performance which Christopher Hitchens, no admirer of Galloway, believed was a rhetorical "humiliation" of the Senate. A verbatim transcript of Galloway's testimony, together with a video record of the proceedings can be found at the Information Clearing House. To account for the discrepancy between the factual existence of Galloway's testimony and its nonappearance in the Senate website raises the possibility that Mr. Galloway's oral testimony is considered distinct from a written statement by the Senate rules or it has been expunged from the record because it puts the Senators in a bad light. But there is a third possibility.Panel 1
Mark L. Greenblatt [View PDF] , Counsel , U.S. Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations
Steven A. Groves [View PDF] , Counsel , U.S. Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations
Dan M. Berkovitz [View PDF] , Counsel to the Minority , U. S. Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations
Panel 2
George Galloway , Member of Parliament for Bethnal Green and Bow , Great Britain
Mr Galloway did not submit a statement
Panel 3
Thomas A. Schweich [View PDF] , Chief of Staff, U.S. Mission to the United Nations , U. S. Department of State
Robert W. Werner [View PDF] , Director, Office of Foreign Assets Control , U. S. Department of the Treasury
Peter Reddaway [View PDF] , Professor Emeritus of Political Science and International Affairs , George Washington University
The really striking thing about the Galloway's testimony as transcribed by the Information Clearing House is how the Senators and the Member of Parliament for Bethnal Green and Bow were pursuing a non-collision course. Galloway had come to score press and public relations points at which, by all accounts, he was successful at doing. But Senator Coleman and Levin seemed totally uninterested in responding to Galloway's sharp political jibes. It was almost as if the Senators were deaf to his political posturing. Instead, they focused exclusively and repeatedly on two things: Galloway's relationship with Fawaz Zureikat and Tariq Aziz. Zureikat was a board member of Galloway's Mariam foundation who is also implicated in the Oil For Food deals. Tariq Aziz was Saddam's vice president.
It is clear that Coleman and Levin were attempting to pin Galloway down on what he knew and when he knew it. They were also attempting to get him to categorically declare himself on the veracity of the Zureikat do ent. In the end, Galloway denied talking to Zureikat about oil deals with Saddam before it became a public issue. He also undertook to evaluate the veracity of the do ent which named him -- in parenthesis admittedly -- in one a do ent related to Oil for Food.SEN. COLEMAN: If I can get back to Mr. Zureikat one more time. Do you recall a time when he specifically -- when you had a conversation with him about oil dealings in Iraq?
GALLOWAY: I have already answered that question. I can assure you, Mr. Zureikat never gave me a penny from an oil deal, from a cake deal, from a bread deal, or from any deal. He donated money to our campaign, which we publicly brandished on all of our literature, along with the other donors to the campaign.
SEN. COLEMAN: Again, Mr. Galloway, a simple question. I'm looking for either a yes or no. Did you ever have a conversation with Mr. Zureikat where he informed you that he had oil dealings with Iraq, yes or no?
GALLOWAY: Not before this Daily Telegraph report, no. ...
SEN. CARL LEVIN (D): Thank you, Mr. Galloway.
Mr. Galloway, could you take a look at the Exhibit Number 12...
GALLOWAY: Yes.
SEN. LEVIN: ... where your name is in parenthesis after Mr. Zureikat's?--
GALLOWAY: Before Mr. Zureikat's, if I'm looking at the right exhibit--
SEN. LEVIN: I'm sorry. I was going to finish my sentence -- my question, though. My question was, where your name is in parenthesis after Mr. Zureikat's company.
GALLOWAY: I apologize, Senator.
SEN. LEVIN: That's all right. Now, that do ent--assuming it's an accurate translation of the do ent underneath it--would you... you're not alleging here today that the do ent is a forgery, I gather?
GALLOWAY: Well, I have no idea, Senator, if it's a forgery or not.
SEN. LEVIN: But you're not alleging.
GALLOWAY: I'm saying that the information insofar as it relates to me is fake.
SEN. LEVIN: I -- is wrong?
GALLOWAY: It's wrong.
SEN. LEVIN: But you're not alleging that the do ent...
GALLOWAY: Well, I have no way of knowing, Senator.
SEN. LEVIN: That's fine. So you're not alleging?
GALLOWAY: No, I have no way -- I have no way of knowing. This is the first time...
SEN. LEVIN: Is it fair to say since you don't know, you're not alleging?
GALLOWAY: Well, it would have been nice to have seen it before today.
SEN. LEVIN: Is it fair to say, though, that either because you've not seen it before or because -- otherwise, you don't know. You're not alleging the do ent's a fake. Is that fair to say?
GALLOWAY: I haven't had it in my possession long enough to form a view about that.
SEN. LEVIN: All right. Would you let the subcommittee know after you've had it in your possession long enough whether you consider the do ent a fake.
GALLOWAY: Yes, although there is a -- there is an academic quality about it, Senator Levin, because you have already found me guilty before you -- before you actually allowed me to come here and speak for myself.
SEN. LEVIN: Well, in order to attempt to clear your name, would you...
GALLOWAY: Well, let's be clear about something.
SEN. LEVIN: Well, let me finish my question. Let me be clear about that, first of all. Would you submit to the subcommittee after you've had a chance to review this do ent whether or not, in your judgment, it is a forgery? Will you do that?
GALLOWAY: Well, if you will give me the original. I mean, this is not -- presumably, you wrote this English translation.
SEN. LEVIN: Yes, and there's a copy underneath it of the...
GALLOWAY: Well, yes, there is a copy of a gray blur. If you'll give me -- if you'll give me the original ...
SEN. LEVIN: The copy of the original.
(CROSSTALK)
GALLOWAY: Give me the original in a decipherable way, then of course I'll...
SEN. LEVIN: That would be fine. We appreciate that.
GALLOWAY: Yes.
In the exchange above it is abundantly clear that both Coleman and Levin simply wanted to enter Galloway's denial of having discussed Oil for Food business with Tariq Aziz in the record. Levin immediately ends his questioning after eliciting Galloway's "Never". Coleman is content to merely establish that Aziz and Galloway were "friends" who had met "many times" before saying "I have no further questions of the witness".SEN. LEVIN: ... I wanted just to ask you about Tariq Aziz.
GALLOWAY: Yeah.
SEN. LEVIN: Tariq Aziz. You've indicated you, you--who you didn't talk to and who you did talk to. Did you have conversations with Tariq Aziz about the award of oil allocations? That's my question.
GALLOWAY: Never.
SEN. LEVIN: Thank you. I'm done. Thank you.
SEN. COLEMAN: Just one follow-up on the Tariq Aziz question. How often did you uh ... Can you describe the relation with Tariq Aziz?
GALLOWAY: Friendly.
SEN. COLEMAN: How often did you meet him?
GALLOWAY: Many times.
SEN. COLEMAN: Can you give an estimate of that?
GALLOWAY: No. Many times.
SEN. COLEMAN: Is it more than five?
GALLOWAY: Yes, sir.
SEN. COLEMAN: More than ten?
GALLOWAY: Yes.
SEN. COLEMAN: Fifteen? Around fifteen?
GALLOWAY: Well, we're getting nearer, but I haven't counted. But many times. I'm saying to you "Many times," and I'm saying to you that I was friendly with him.
SEN. COLEMAN: And you describe him as "a very dear friend"?
GALLOWAY: I think you've quoted me as saying "a dear, dear friend." I don't often use the double adjective, but--
SEN. COLEMAN: --I was looking into your heart on that.--
GALLOWAY: --but "friend" I have no problem with. Senator, just before you go on--I do hope that you'll avail yourself of this dossier that I have produced. And I am really speaking through you to Senator Levin. This is what I have said about Saddam Hussein.
SEN. COLEMAN: Well, we'll enter that into the record without objection. I have no further questions of the witness. You're excused, Mr. Galloway.
GALLOWAY: Thank you very much.
Unless the Oil for Food hearings have come to a complete dead end, Coleman and Levin's examination of Galloway aren't the pointless thrashings of Senators at a loss to respond to the devastating wit of the British MP but tantalizing clues to the direction they wish the investigations to take. The question that must have been in Galloway's mind -- and which is uppermost in mine -- is what else did the Senators know? The persons named by the Senate investigation so far -- Zhirinovsky, Pasqua and Galloway -- reads less like a list of principals than a list of fixers. The truly remarkable thing about Galloway's many meetings with Tariq Aziz was how much time the Iraqi was willing to devote to an obscure British backbencher with no official power. The unspoken question is why Saddam should take the trouble to bribe Galloway, if it were Galloway who was being bribed. The Senators were building a causal bridge to something, but to what? I am in no position to say, but will guess that Galloway's testimony and its disappearance from the Senate website can only be understood in the context of what Coleman and Levin were trying to achieve. My own sense is that the investigations are cautiously nearing far bigger game than George Galloway; but that his evidence or his refusal to give it is somehow crucial to achieving this larger goal. Other pieces of the puzzle may exist but there are two the public know about which may cast an interesting light in hindsight on Galloway's words. The first is contained in the Volcker Commission files which investigator Robert Parton turned over to the Senate Committee and the second is the forthcoming trial of Saddam Hussein and Tariq Aziz. George Galloway may have appeared in the Senate but even he must be uncertain, until the missing pieces are played on the board, what he really said.
Meanwhile, I've been hoping to see the promised Christopher Hitchens thrashing of that disgusting animal, and here it is:
I'm amazed at how many bloggers and blog commenters seem to think Galloway is an admirable person. I've never seen anyone more deserving of a violent, painful death in my life. He's the worst kind of public figure, an Omarosa with poltical power. He breaks the law and the social contract and screams publicly that he's the aggrieved party. It's disgusting, and so is he and anyone who supports him.
Never mind that Galloway has successfully defended himself of these accusation before...
Link...Senator Coleman seems to think that as long as the stuff he is getting from the neo-cons is winning him the plaudits of the Wall Street Journal editorial page and Rupert Murdoch's news empire, he can not only take it to the Sunday talk shows, but also attack members of the British Parliament who have different views on the subject. He did so recently by accusing George Galloway of the House of Commons of corruption in the so-called "Oil-for-Food Scandal" and instead of slinking away into the London fog, Galloway showed up in Washington this last week to appear before the Coleman subcommittee investigating the "Scandal." He did so having won in December 150,000 British pounds in libel damages from the Daily Telegraph over its separate claims he had received money from Saddam's regime. After Coleman laid out a series of charges against him, here is what Galloway had to say. The last we saw, Senator Coleman was seen slinking away into the fog...
Yeah, well this isn't a tabloid accusation and he's not suing...hmmm...wonder why that is?
I'm sure he'll get to it, but for the moment shouldn't we be more concerned that these accusations are tabloid news worthy - and they lost.Yeah, well this isn't a tabloid accusation and he's not suing...hmmm...wonder why that is?
Hey, the tabloids don't have the investigative power of Congress, so, I guess we'll see...
Let me know when Galloway files his libel suit against the U.S. Congress, okay?
http://www.seixon.com/blog/archives/...ll_due_re.html
With all due RESPECT, Mr. Galloway…
"Gorgeous George" has made a big come-back since his expulsion from the Labour party in the UK. After his close win for an MP seat, he has gotten the adoration of many opposed to the war and the Bush administration for his fiery performance in front of a Senate committee on May 17th. The media doesn't have any problem transparently showing off their bias in this regard, here are a few headlines:
Finally, Someone Stands Up to Senate Hypocrites - LATimes
Gorgeous George batters Bush’s beautiful fairy tale - Times UK
British Lawmaker Scolds Senators on Iraq - NYTimes
Papers hail fighting Galloway - BBC
I think we see where this is going...
After listening to Galloway's testimony, I specifically remembered one thing quite well which made me wonder. After contending that he had known all along about his Mariam Appeal (the political organization they set up to protest the Iraq sanctions) partner's business dealings with Iraq. All except the oil deals Mr. Zureikat apparently was doing with the regime. In explaining this, he said as many times before that he had "done better" than what the senators asked of him. The relevant exchange:
SEN. COLEMAN: So Mr. Galloway, you would have this committee believe that your designated representative from the Mariam's Appeal becomes the chair of the Mariam's Appeal, was listed in Iraqi do ents as obviously doing business, oil deals with Iraq, that you never had a conversation with him in 2001 or whether he was doing oil business with Iraq.
GALLOWAY: No, I'm doing better than that. I'm telling you that I knew that he was doing a vast amount of business with Iraq. Much bigger, as I said a couple of answers ago, than any oil business he did. In the airports he was the representative of some of the world's biggest companies in Iraq. He was an extremely wealthy businessman doing very extensive business in Iraq.
Not only did I know that, but I told everyone about it. I emblazoned it in our literature, on our Web site, precisely so that people like you could not later credibly question my bonafides in that regard. So I did better than that.
I never asked him if he was trading in oil. I knew he was a big trader with Iraq, and I told everybody about it.
http://simplyappalling.blogspot.com/...-galloway.html
So he "emblazoned" on the Mariam Appeal website that Mr. Zureikat was doing vast amounts of business with Iraq, he says. He clarifies this further later on:
GALLOWAY: I have already answered that question. I can assure you, Mr. Zureikat never gave me a penny from an oil deal, from a cake deal, from a bread deal, or from any deal. He donated money to our campaign, which we publicly brandished on all of our literature, along with the other donors to the campaign.
After hearing that they had published that Mr. Zureikat was a donor to the campaign and that he was doing extensive business with Iraq on their website, I thought it would be a good idea to have a look, you know, because I don't go around believing whatever people say just because I like their ideology.
Now I'm guessing that Galloway as a career politician at the ripe age of 50 has a bit limited knowledge of how the internet works, and what is possible on the internet. You see, the Mariam Appeal website has been out of commission since at least September 20, 2002. How do I know that? From using a service called WHOIS. It tells you who holds the rights to a domain name and various information about the registration of the domain name.
The website changed owners on September 20, 2002 when it was registered by a Taiwanese company, most likely acting as cyber-squatters, hoping that someone would buy the domain name from them. Perhaps Mariam Appeal forgot to renew their domain name, and the Taiwanese company snapped it up from them. Regardless, you can see that the Mariam Appeal domain name was registered by the Taiwanese company at this WHOIS service. As you can clearly see on the website as it now exists, and has existed since September 20, 2002 it says, "FOR SALE!!! Contact Us!!!"
Galloway, knowing full well that his website was down, told the Senate committee that he had "emblazoned" on his website that his partner in the organization had extensive business dealings with Iraq and was a donator to the campaign. Thus he most likely believed that there would be no way to check if he was lying or not.
He couldn't have been more wrong.
Using an awesome website called the Internet Archive Wayback Machine, we can look up how the Mariam Appeal website appeared throughout the past few years. I'm fairly certain that Mr. Galloway was not aware of this, for if he was, I'm not certain he would have made the statements he made.
Using this website, the last recorded instance of www.mariamappeal.com, when it was still under control of Mariam Appeal and George Galloway, was on July 21, 2001. As you can see on the website at this point in time, there is absolutely no mention of Mr. Zureikat or any other donors to the organization at all. There is no mention of Mr. Zureikat being in extensive business dealings with Iraq. Nothing.
The next instance of the website that is recorded on this service is September 23, 2002. At this point, the domain name has been transferred to the Taiwanese company, and they have set up their page for the sale of the domain name.
Galloway made the following statements regarding the timing of his partner's donations and becoming a representative within the organization:
SEN. COLEMAN: How much did Mr. Zureikat contribute to Mariam's Appeals?
GALLOWAY: Roughly 375,000 English pounds.
SEN. COLEMAN: About $600,000?
GALLOWAY: I don't know the conversion. But it's 375,000 Sterling.
SEN. COLEMAN: If you can, uh... By the way, Mr. Zureikat was your representative--uh, designated representative--for the activities of Mariam's Appeals. Is that correct?
GALLOWAY: For the activities of Mariam's Appeals. Yes.
SEN. COLEMAN: And when did he get that position?
GALLOWAY: I think late 2000.
Mr. Zureikat was the designated representative for the activities of Mariam Appeal in late 2000 and donated £375,000. Galloway claims he told everyone about this, and that Zureikat was doing extensive business in Iraq. He said he "emblazoned" it on the website. As of July 21, 2001 there was still not one word about this on their website, and the went down between that date and September 20, 2002.
Now I feel like this makes Galloway's claim a bit questionable. Does anyone have a subscription to whois.sc silver service, or any other service that will find out more about the history of the domain name www.mariamappeal.com?
Zureikat was not listed as a donor or as having done extensive business in Iraq on Mariam Appeal's website up to or more than 7 months after he donated to the campaign. Even though Galloway contends exactly that, that it was "emblazoned" on their website.
With all due respect, Mr. Galloway, did you tell a fib with the knowledge that the website went down almost 3 years ago and that your statement, according to your knowledge of the internet, could not be checked for accuracy?
Read on if you want more examples of questionable statements from Mr. Galloway, not to mention outrightlies...
I'll start off with three undeniable lies or false statements from Mr. Galloway:
Galloway: These are the same false allegations which are still the subject of a libel action with the Daily Telegraph (so far I'm £1.6m [$3m] up).
Well, actually:
The staff report by the Senate Permanent Sub-Committee of Investigations emphasised that its findings were based on do ents that had no relation to the “seemingly forged do ents” used in the Daily Telegraph piece, noting that the panel was relying on Iraqi Oil Ministry do ents from 2001.
“The Daily Telegraph do ents reportedly included allegations that Galloway was on the payroll of the Hussein regime, receiving a salary or direct payments,” it said. “In contrast, the evidence examined by the sub-committee indicates that Galloway was granted oil allocations that would have to be monetised through complex oil transactions.”
Next:
Galloway: This is a lickspittle Republican committee, acting on the wishes of George W Bush.
Not so:
Today Senators Norm Coleman (R-MN) and Carl Levin (D-MI), Chairman and Ranking Member respectively of the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations (PSI), issued a joint staff report disclosing evidence that the former French Minister of Interior Charles Pasqua and recently reelected member of the British Parliament George Galloway were granted lucrative oil allocations under the United Nations Oil for Food Program (OFF).
The committee has 7 Republicans and 6 Democrats. Galloway's statement is transparently disingenuous, trying to smear his accusers as foot soldiers of his political enemies.
Galloway: Isn't it strange - and contrary to natural justice you might think - that I have written and e-mailed repeatedly asking for the opportunity to appear before the committee to provide evidence and rebut their assumptions and they have yet to respond, while apparently making a judgement.
This committee has never written to me, never spoken to me and has not even acknowledged my offer last year to appear in front of them, so it is not much of an investigation.
Well, there seems to be a difference of opinion about that...
Contrary to his assertions, at no time did Mr. Galloway contact PSI by any means, including but not limited to telephone, fax, email, letter, Morse code or carrier pigeon. Chairman Coleman would be pleased to have Mr. Galloway appear at the Subcommittee's May 17th hearing en led, "Oil For Influence: How Saddam Used Oil to Reward Politicians and Terrorist En ies Under the United Nations Oil-for-Food Program." The hearing will begin promptly at 9:30 AM and there will be a witness chair and microphone available for Mr. Galloway's use.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article...607720,00.html
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/4539379.stm
http://powerlineblog.com/archives/010434.php
Here on Saddam Hussein:
Galloway: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.
You will see from the official parliamentary record, Hansard, from the 15th March 1990 onwards, voluminous evidence that I have a rather better record of opposition to Saddam Hussein than you do and than any other member of the British or American governments do.
Well, the Hansard records are available online. Don't mind if I do!
Nov 28, 1990:
Mr. George Galloway (Glasgow, Hillhead) : The Foreign Secretary was elected this lunch time the Spectator parliamentarian of the year. That accolade is well deserved and I congratulate him upon it. Will he accept that he cuts an unlikely figure in favour of war, war rather than jaw, jaw? Yet the words he has delivered this afternoon amount to an ultimatum, so that it is more rather than less likely that our cons uents--young men-- will shortly be coming home dead in bags. I have no truck with Saddam Hussein, and I hope that the Foreign Secretary accepts that. However, on the day when Saddam Hussein has asked President Bush for talks, will the right hon. Gentleman accept that the Iraqis and millions of Arabs across the area who agree with them have a point of view and that it might be useful to sit down and talk about that before the place goes up in flames and our young men and many hundreds and thousands of others are killed?
Source
Legitimizing Saddam's view that Kuwait was Iraq's rightful territory, check.
Jan 17, 1991:
In so far as Saddam Hussein is a brutal dictator, does it not follow that his own people are by definition his victims, just as much as the hostages and the people of Kuwait? Does it not give the Prime Minister a moment's pause for thought that those are the very people who, as we speak, are being dragged dead and mutilated out of the rubble of the centre of Baghdad?
Source
Moral relativism of comparing collateral damage of coalition strikes to Saddam being a brutal dictator, check.
Jan 13, 1993:
Mr. George Galloway (Glasgow, Hillhead) : The Secretary of State should be aware that the action taken tonight is worse than a crime--it is a blunder. It is a blunder because, when the fog of war clears tomorrow, we shall find that the people who have been not "spanked", as my hon. Friend the Member for Walsall, South (Mr. George) had it, but torn limb from limb and incinerated under the bombs--smart or otherwise--will be people who never voted for Saddam Hussein and who are not responsible for the crimes that he has committed down the years, including all the years during which the British Government were selling him arms.
The radicalisation and Islamicisation that is occurring across the Arab area and the broader Muslim world will be greatly intensified by what will be regarded as western double standards, whereby the west is ready, at a moment's notice, to pulverise Iraq, but unable, over decades, to do anything about Israel's rejecting and ignoring international law and international standards, or to do anything to save the lives of the tens of thousands of Bosnian Muslims who have died in the current campaign in former Yugoslavia.
Is not the Secretary of State aware that, across the Arab world, Saddam Hussein has been made into a hero by those double standards, and that the blunder and crime that was committed this evening will come back to haunt us in years to come?
Mr. Rifkind : I must first tell the hon. Gentleman that his views are not the views of Arab Governments in the region, who are already welcoming the action that has been taken today. I must also remind the hon. Gentleman that, whereas the coalition today restricted itself deliberately to military targets, the no- fly zone was introduced to prevent Iraqi aircraft, ultimately commanded by Saddam Hussein, from bombing innocent civilians--innocent men, women and children--in southern Iraq. If the hon. Gentleman's advice were accepted, it would lead directly to the non-continuation of the no-fly zone restrictions and to the resumption of the bombing of innocent people. That is where the hon. Gentleman's policy would appear to lead.
Source
Ouch.
I'll be nice to Galloway though, here's another one...
Mar 15, 1990:
Mr. George Galloway (Glasgow, Hillhead) : The Iraqi regime has besmirched the name of its people by the judicial murder this morning--as any state which commits judicial murder does.
Source
But of course, then we have the statements after all of this...
To Saddam Hussein in 1994:
Sir, I salute your courage, your strength, your indefatigability and I want you to know that we are with you
And:
Your Excellency, Mr. President, I greet you in the name of many thousands of people in Britain who stood against the tide and opposed the war of aggression against Iraq and continue to oppose the war by economic means, which is aimed to strangle the life out of the great people of Iraq.
And some strawmen and other things from his testimony to the Senate committee:
I told the world that Iraq, contrary to your claims did not have weapons of mass destruction.
Was that what Saddam told you personally? What about the warheads filled with mus gas that UNMOVIC destroyed in March 2003? (UNMOVIC May 30, 2003 report, paragraph 119)
I told the world, contrary to your claims, that Iraq had no connection to al-Qaeda.
Iraq and al-Qaeda did have a "connection", however much you want to put into that statement. They had correspondance, agreed to not attack each other, and Saddam Hussein would not deliver Zarqawi to Jordan at their request...
I told the world, contrary to your claims, that Iraq had no connection to the atrocity on 9/11 2001.
They never claimed this, Mr. Strawman.
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.
So now the thugs and murderers that are blowing people up are synonymous with "the Iraqi people"? Wow, alright.
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.
Obviously Mr. Galloway hasn't read the latest UNDP report that 24,000 Iraqis have died, not 100,000.
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.
Guns? Is that what we call bacteria samples and civilian helicopters these days?
I was an opponent of Saddam Hussein when British and Americans governments and businessmen were selling him guns and gas.
Guns and gas? No guns, no gas. Bacteria samples? Yes. Civilian helicopters? Yes. Guns and gas? No. American companies were involved with building an ethylene plant in Iraq, yet it was never finished due to the invasion of Kuwait. I'm not aware that ethylene is a gas, nor a precursor of "gas". Ethylene oxide is a precursor for VX though, if I remember correctly.
You quote Mr Dahar Yassein Ramadan. Well, you have something on me, I've never met Mr Dahar Yassein Ramadan. Your sub-committee apparently has. But I do know that he's your prisoner, I believe he's in Abu Ghraib prison. I believe he is facing war crimes charges, punishable by death. In these cir stances, knowing what the world knows about how you treat prisoners in Abu Ghraib prison, in Bagram Airbase, in Guantanamo Bay, including I may say, British citizens being held in those places.
I'm not sure how much credibility anyone would put on anything you manage to get from a prisoner in those cir stances. But you quote 13 words from Dahar Yassein Ramadan whom I have never met. If he said what he said, then he is wrong.
Aha, so since mistreatment occurred on a few occasions, then automatically every single prisoner at every prison has been abused and therefore anything they have said is not credible. I'm tempted to check if Ramadan is even in Abu Ghraib prison. With Galloway's record on the facts, I'd doubt 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.
No doubt Mr. Galloway read this Guardian article on his way to the committee:
The scale of the shipments involved dwarfs those previously alleged by the Senate committee against UN staff and European politicians like the British MP, George Galloway, and the former French minister, Charles Pasqua.
In fact, the Senate report found that US oil purchases accounted for 52% of the kickbacks paid to the regime in return for sales of cheap oil - more than the rest of the world put together.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story...485649,00.html
How convenient. Sure, US oil purchases may have accounted for 52% of the kickbacks. From this you are supposed to get the idea that American or American companies stood for 52% of the kickbacks, which is exactly what Galloway used as ammo. OPEC's do ents show that 53.75% of Iraq's oil ended up in the USA in the years 2001-2002. If you might understand by now, these two figures have much in common. The number the Guardian has used here applies to all sales of oil that were conducted to sell oil to American companies. For example, Galloway's partner Zureikat may have optioned on some of those allocations from Galloway and sold the oil to the oil company he was involved with. This company would then have had to pay kickbacks. Then this oil company could have sold the oil to the US market, thus part of this magic 52% figure.
Which tells you that the figure is meaningless in assigning blame for kickbacks, and just demonstrates how much oil was going from Iraq to the USA in general.
Now I've mighty tired of writing about Galloway and the liars who defend him, including himself. Only the future knows what is in store for Galloway, but from his record of lying and deflecting, I'm inclined to believe that he is in some kind of trouble here
Using this website, the last recorded instance of www.mariamappeal.com, when it was still under control of Mariam Appeal and George Galloway, was on July 21, 2001. As you can see on the website at this point in time, there is absolutely no mention of Mr. Zureikat or any other donors to the organization at all. There is no mention of Mr. Zureikat being in extensive business dealings with Iraq. Nothing.
The next instance of the website that is recorded on this service is September 23, 2002. At this point, the domain name has been transferred to the Taiwanese company, and they have set up their page for the sale of the domain name.Sometimes the web moves slowly, unless your a WH aide erasing Galloway's testimony from the official Senate record. There is more than a year missing between the two archived sites this author uses to make his case, but that doesn't stop him from interpulating (or making up) that the information wasn't ever there at all.Mr. Zureikat was the designated representative for the activities of Mariam Appeal in late 2000 and donated £375,000. Galloway claims he told everyone about this, and that Zureikat was doing extensive business in Iraq. He said he "emblazoned" it on the website. As of July 21, 2001 there was still not one word about this on their website, and the went down between that date and September 20, 2002.
The rest of your post is a mumbled collection of unverifiable innuendo, statements taken out of context, and writer interpolation. The next time post your sources.
Prime example of your inability to read. My source is the original link at the top of the post. None of the above was from ME.The next time post your sources.
You would know that if you could read and comprehend.
My bad, that must be asking too much.
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