Gorgeous George upsets the Senate

Home Truths | 18.05.2005 00:20 | Anti-militarism | London

Accustomed only to hearing ‘positive’ pro-war sound-bites from the Administration, Americans were taken aback by George Galloway’s frank oratory. Facts are his defense in the face of monumental lies and his accusers expose themselves, while attempting to disgrace him.

Here are some of the quotes from British MP George Galloway as he confronted his accusers on a US Senate sub-committee.

"Who paid me hundreds of thousands of dollars? The answer to that is nobody and if you had anybody who paid me a penny you would have produced them here today."

"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."

"You traduced my name around the world without ever having asked me a single question, without ever having contacted me, without ever having written to me or telephoned me, without any contact with me whatsoever and you call that justice."

"Senator [Norm Coleman, committee chairman], this is the mother of all smoke screens. You are trying to divert attention from the crimes that you supported from the theft of billions of dollars of Iraq's wealth."

"You have nothing on me Senator [Coleman], except my name on lists of names in Iraq, many of which were drawn up after the installation of your puppet government in Iraq."

"I have never seen a barrel of oil, owned one, bought one, sold one, and neither has anybody on my behalf."

"I know that standards have slipped over the last few years in Washington but for a lawyer you are remarkably cavalier with any idea of justice."

"One of the most serious mistakes you have made in this set of documents is such a schoolboy howler it makes a fool of the efforts you have made."

"Senator [Coleman], in everything I said about Iraq I turned out to be right and you turned out to be wrong and 100,000 have paid with their lives, 1,600 of them American soldiers sent to their deaths on a pack of lies."

A previous quote from the firebrand Scot.

“The people who invaded and destroyed Iraq and have murdered more than a million Iraqi people by sanctions and war, will burn in Hell in the hell-fires, and their name in history will be branded as killers and war criminals for all time. Fallujah is a Guernica, Falluaja is a Stalingrad, and Iraq is in flames as a result of the actions of these criminals. Not the resistance, not anybody else but these criminals who invaded and fell like wolves upon the people of Iraq. And by the way, those Arab regimes which helped them to do it will burn in the same hell-fires.”

Home Truths
Homepage: http:// http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/4556113.stm

Comments

Hide the following 18 comments

Well done George!

18.05.2005 06:01

What a wonderful performance he gave! I hope it was seen all around the world. If only there were more people in government like him. Fat chance though in our sham democracy.

Doug.

Scots at the Top

18.05.2005 08:26

I'm not suggesting George Galloway is squeeky clean, but men with his political experience, integrity, guts, intelect and charisma, are rare. He relishes centre stage and the Administration foolish enough to put him there, will pay heavily, for this charade.

Rob Roy

Corker!

18.05.2005 09:06

Yeh it was fantastic...I'd like to see the BBC (especially BBC London) try and put a negative spin on that one......

...but they probably will somehow.

appleman

Galloway's rebuttle

18.05.2005 09:29

Incase you missed it!

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article8866.htm

Rant
Homepage: http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article8866.htm

No Doubt

18.05.2005 12:26

I don't think that the damages paid to Galloway have been anything close to sufficient- as you can't quantify the damage done to both to him personally, and to the movement which he is a part of, in monetary terms.

In my mind £150,000 from the Telegraph is not sufficient to make an impact on public opinion which would outweigh the damage done by their accusations. People seem to think that there is no smoke without fire.. there is simply no way a court can ensure the reversal of that damage.

However, Galloway has now cleared his name single handedly despite all the odds- he was not able to examine the documents relating to these fresh accusations, however he left no doubt in my mind as to his innocence.. this has let me feeling much more positive about the respect coalition as an electoral alternative.

He made an absolute mockery of any credibility that his accusers would purport to possess- raising a whole host of questions about the existence of these false documents and the origin of the accusations against Galloway and the others implicated in this enquiry.

Only Galloway could brush aside such charges, with barely a word out of place with such conviction and passion. To boot, he turned the tables on his mealy mouthed accusers- who seemed on the defensive.

My opinion of Galloway has vastly improved since watching the episode in its entirety

Hayley
mail e-mail: hayley.dawn84@gmail.com

It gets better and better and better......

18.05.2005 12:35

It gets better and better and better. First Respect evict an unpopular pro-war Blairite poodle in Bethnal Green and Bow. Next Galloway forces that wanker Paxman to congratulate him on his magnificent victory. Now Galloway takes on the US senate and the neocons in Washington and demolishes all of their arguments and allegations on live tv in front of millions of people. Well done Galloway and Respect, you have done the whole progressive movement in this country and the States a massive service for refusing to bow down in front of the war mongers and the McCarthyite witch-hunters.

Apparently Galloway is speaking at the Friends Meeting House in London tonight. If he is on anything like the form of yesterday the meeting will be unmissable!

I'm Spartacus.

BBC's smoothing over

18.05.2005 13:42

I happened to be in the gym watching the BBC TV news over about 40 mins -- which meant two news cycles. The first news cycle they showed George making mincemeat of them, by the second news cycle they were already simply chopping it down to "Galloway denies benefitting from oil trading" (or something similar), which from those already brainwashed would produce the response 'but he would anyway!' So, it seems that the bigboys and girls in the newsroom just tried to smash the story down.

Galloway was magnificent. I wonder how many in the House of Commons could match him at that close quarters verbal combat.

Rex

From Across The Pond

18.05.2005 13:44

Mr. Galloway gave a truly bravura performance before Senators Coleman and Levin. His In-Your-Face style was exactly what our smug politicians deserved. They have colluded with the Bush regime in starting this war in Iraq based on lies and need to be reminded of it every waking minute of their miserable lives.

Roland

...

18.05.2005 14:38

I saw something on CNN about it. It was funny. They simply didn't mention anything that Galloway said, and only re-iterated the accusations against him, without printing any words of his defence.

Ah, freedom of speech...

Hermes

spin

18.05.2005 16:36

I saw on the (UK) news a clip of American News - you see Galloway speaking for a few seconds and then the newsreader does a bit of commentating over the top: "Galloway now goes off on what is essentially a rant, for want of a better word for it".

let's be honest

18.05.2005 18:00

Yes it was a brilliant performance and I share your delight at seeing Galloway dish out black eyes to the various warmongers, but let's be honest it was exactly that - a performance. Galloway can't be trusted. I suspect these particular allegations are just part of a smear campaign but there are more worrying things about the man then those. He's a ruthless operator and an authoritarian. I notice no-one has mentioned that in his testimony to the Senate he admitted Tariq Aziz, a top level Ba'athist and open apologist for various crimes against humanity throughout the years, as 'a friend'. I notice that no-one has mentioned Galloway persistently avoiding answering the question of whether he was troubled by the possibility of a key funder of his appeal being involved in corruption and 'kickbacks'. Blair would have been proud of the way Galloway avoided answering that one.
Then there's the past comments he's made from his support for the dictatorship in Pakistan to describing Castro as his "hero". So let's not idolise this man. He's brilliant to watch but at the end of the day cannot be trusted.

Andrew

Can't be trusted?

18.05.2005 19:24

Andrew,

He can be trusted, because he says exactly what he believes however unpopular his opinion may be. With Galloway you know what you are getting.

mark

Oh Andrew , you,re so middle of the bleedin road.

18.05.2005 20:07

Castro , Guevara , Chavez , Galloway et al.
I fuckin love you all because you all stood up to the biggest bullying , murdering bastards this world has ever seen.
Come on Andrew make that leap leftwards and upwards.

Welliot

oh really?

18.05.2005 21:09

Why then when asked if he was on the 'Stalinist left' did he reply "I wouldn't define it that way because of the pejoratives loaded around it; that would be making a rod for your own back."

That suggests to me precisely the reverse - that he doesn't dare admit the extent of his authoritarianism for fear of the political consequences.

I agree that he is more open in terms of outspokeness than many politicians but to me anyone who supports mass murdering dictatorships cannot be trusted at the end of the day.

Since when....

19.05.2005 03:41

Since when has being a leftist been equatable with being un-trustworthy? Just cos someone has a particular ideology, doesn't mean they're all cloak and dagger. I believe mr Galloways socialist rootings are quite plain in sight - nothing subterranean about it at all. I also regarded his performance yesterday as being heroically honest. It's a tragedy that anti-war protestors or anti-zionist protestors have maintained a position of absolute truth and get accused of the worst kind of dishonest activities, whilst those who maintain a position of lies and dishonest activites, get voted back into power virtually unscathed. Galloway's victory is something we should celebrate, because this has been long overdue. This is for: Robin Cook, Greg Dyke, Andrew Gillingham, Piers Morgan, Dr David Kelly, not to mention of course the unquantifiable amount of Iraqi's, British and American soldiers who have perished.

chocky

I wouldn't trust George...

19.05.2005 07:37

I wouldn't trust George only to the extent that I wouldn't trust any politician. It is just that it is so wonderful to see someone make mincemeat of our masters, however briefly, while circumventing mainstream media censorship. I have no doubt that, if they don't murder him first, George will eventually be absorbed and thereby rendered impotent and he will probably end his days in the Lords, with perhaps a knighthood or some equally ridiculous token of establishment appreciation.

Talking to Aziz

19.05.2005 17:42

So Galloway can´t be trusted because he talked to Tariq Aziz, Saddam etc? At the time Galloway was visiting Iraq, or set up the Maryam trust - they where those in power. To achieve what Galloway tried to achieve - who else should he have talked to? Of course it´s a pity people like Andrew wheren´t around at that time. They could have been essential in setting up little middleclass student talking shops in leafy Bagdad ´hoods -strictly grass roots of course! (That´s left now to the US-poodles in Iraq) ...I have met a lot of folk in my life who claimed to be grass roots, anarchist, anti-authoritarian, and they always found a flaw in socialist campaigns. - These people always turned out to be no less authoritarian than the people they criticised: assorted Trots and Tankies. ...The difference is the latter at least managed to set up the respect coalition.

Volker from Berlin

idiotic

19.05.2005 21:45

"So Galloway can´t be trusted because he talked to Tariq Aziz, Saddam etc? At the time Galloway was visiting Iraq, or set up the Maryam trust - they where those in power. To achieve what Galloway tried to achieve - who else should he have talked to?"

As you well know, I didn't say any such thing. I didn't mention his talks with Saddam because yes indeed it could be justified as talks necessary to both get rid of murderous sanctions and prevent war. I did mention Tariq Aziz however as he openly described him as 'a friend' in front of the Senate in recent days. There can be no explanation for this except that Galloway is sympathetic towards open apologists for mass murder.

Your cheap, pitiful sarcasm does not change this.