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Title: What Galloway said
Source:
Times Online (UK)
URL Source: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,3-1616893,00.html
Published: May 18, 2005
Author: Galloway
Post Date: 2005-05-17 19:30:37 by robin
Keywords: Galloway, What, said
Views: 237
Comments: 77
“Senator, 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.” “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 Haliburton and other American corporations that stole not only Iraq’s money, but the money of the American taxpayer.” “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.” “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.” “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 having written to me or telephoned me, without any contact with me whatsoever, and you call that justice.” “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 met him to try to bring about an end to sanctions, suffering and war.” “I was an opponent of Saddam Hussein when British and American Governments and businessmen were selling him guns and gas.” “Senator, 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.” ********************************************************** The defiant Respect party MP turned the tables on senators who had accused him of receiving oil allocations from Iraq with a stinging criticism of the war against Iraq to an American television audience that rarely hears such attacks on US policy. “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 the case for invading was a pack of lies,” he said. He had given warning that Iraq did not have weapons of mass destruction and had no connection to al-Qaeda or the September 11 attacks, and that the Iraqi people would resist invasion, he said. “Senator, 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 death on a pack of lies.” Mr Galloway said he had met Saddam only twice. “I have met Saddam Hussein exactly the same number of times as Donald Rumsfeld (the US Defence Secretary) met him. The difference is that he met him to sell him guns and to give him maps to better target those guns. I met him to try to bring about an end to sanctions, suffering and war.” He accused American multinational companies such as Haliburton of plundering Iraq since the invasion, and claimed that the real sanctions busters had been US companies acting with Washington’s connivance. Afterwards Mr Coleman described Mr Galloway’s credibility as very suspect and spoke of consequences if he was found to have lied under oath. Mr Galloway told CNN: “Most of the traffic I’m getting is that the British parliamentary tradition won . . . I came not as the accused but as the accuser.” The MP flew to Washington at his own expense after the permanent subcommittee on investigations accused him of receiving 20 million barrels of “oil allocations” from Saddam. It suggested that he might have used his anti-sanctions campaign, the Mariam Appeal, to “conceal payments”. The committee’s charges were based on Iraqi documents and interviews with senior Saddam officials. They named Mr Galloway as the recipient of oil allocations handled by a French company, Aredio Petroleum, and Middle East ASI, a Jordanian company owned by Fawaz Zureikat who contributed £375,000 to the appeal. But the committee could trace no payments to Mr Galloway himself. Mr Galloway called the charges utterly preposterous, adding: “You have nothing on me, Senator, except my name on lists from Iraq, many of which have been drawn up since the installation of your puppet government.”
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GEORGE GALLOWAY put US Iraq policy on trial in a powerful performance yesterday before a Senate committee that had accused him of being in the pay of Saddam Hussein.
Mr Galloway told the committee’s Republican chairman, Norm Coleman, that he was engaged in “the mother of all smokescreens” to divert attention from US failings. NI_MPU('middle');
Ben Macintyre pages 4, 5
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#5. To: robin (#0)
Smack that rummy :)
"Galloway bluntly confronted the Republican chairman of the committee, Sen. Norm Coleman of Minnesota, and challenged the attorney to back up claims the British MP profited handsomely from the now defunct program. Some of his harshest remarks concerned Coleman's support for the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq that ousted President Saddam Hussein. "Now 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," Galloway said. Galloway accused Coleman of sullying his reputation and falsely asserting that he gave money to Saddam. "You call that justice?" he asked, adding later: "This is utterly preposterous." The MP told reporters later he felt Coleman had failed in his cross-examination. "He's not much of a lyncher," he said. Coleman, in turn, said afterward he did not think Galloway was a "credible witness" and that if he lied to the committee there would be consequences. A maverick kicked out of the British Labour Party for his fervent opposition to the Iraq war and for personal attacks on Prime Minister Tony Blair, Galloway used the opportunity to criticize the U.S. invasion of Iraq. "Senator, in everything I said about Iraq, I turned out to be right and you turned out to be wrong, and 100,000 people have paid with their lives -- 1,600 of them American soldiers sent to their deaths on a pack of lies," he said."
“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 having written to me or telephoned me, without any contact with me whatsoever, and you call that justice.” Coleman, in turn, said afterward he did not think Galloway was a "credible witness" and that if he lied to the committee there would be consequences. Coleman is an ass.
I friggin love this man. Give this man a medal. He all but called them the real traitors. They obviously picked the wrong guy to try to screw. This man is a Patriot.
I was at work so couldn't watch, but I downloaded the transcript and left copies on certain selected desks before i went home. Not often I get all excited about a Scots communist, but he clotheslined that smirking idiot Coleman. You never know when the tipping point is going to come. With Nixon, it was some lowly functionary (Butterfield?) being questioned about the White House routine in a small subcommittee hearing who suddenly revealed that every word in the Oval Office was on tape. I'm not sure exactly where it occurred with LBJ, but he went from being a hugely popular president to a lowlife almost overnight. Galloway is getting major media coverage. Most people never heard of the guy, although I know many of us were aware of him. He took on Tony Blair and got kicked out of his party. Someone at DU posted the actual document that Coleman was referring to but refused to show. It's the most blatant forgery I have ever seen. Wrong typeface, different shade of black, and his name is CROOKED. If you know how a computer can type one name of hundreds on a downward plane, I'd be interested in the explanation. He said it flat out. Bush lied, people died, a hundred thousand or more.
Hahaha, this is great. He roasts Chrissie Snitchens just before the main event. Galloway and the mother of all invective Oliver Burkeman on the Respect MP's Washington performance Wednesday May 18, 2005 The Guardian Whatever else you made of him, when it came to delivering sustained barrages of political invective, you had to salute his indefatigability. George Galloway stormed up to Capitol Hill yesterday morning for the confrontation of his career, firing scatter-shot insults at the senators who had accused him of profiting illegally from Iraqi oil sales. They were "neo-cons" and "Zionists" and a "pro-war lynch mob", he raged, who belonged to a "lickspittle Republican committee" that was engaged in creating "the mother of all smokescreens". Article continues Before the hearing began, the MP for Bethnal Green and Bow even had some scorn left over to bestow generously upon the pro-war writer Christopher Hitchens. "You're a drink-soaked former-Trotskyist popinjay," Mr Galloway informed him. "Your hands are shaking. You badly need another drink," he added later, ignoring Mr Hitchens's questions and staring intently ahead. "And you're a drink-soaked..." Eventually Mr Hitchens gave up. "You're a real thug, aren't you?" he hissed, stalking away. It was a hint of what was to come: not so much political theatre as political bloodsports - and with the senators, at least, it was Mr Galloway who emerged with the flesh between his teeth. "I know that standards have slipped in Washington in recent years, but for a lawyer, you're remarkably cavalier with any idea of justice," he told Norm Coleman, the Minnesota Republican who chairs the senate investigations committee, after taking his seat at the front of the high-ceilinged hearing room, and swearing an oath to tell the truth. "I'm 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." The culture clash between Mr Galloway's bruising style and the soporific gentility of senate proceedings could hardly have been more pronounced, and drew audible gasps and laughs of disbelief from the audience. "I met Saddam Hussein exactly the same number of times as Donald Rumsfeld met him," Mr Galloway went on. "The difference is that Donald Rumsfeld met him to sell him guns, and to give him maps the better to target those guns." American reporters seemed as fascinated as the British media: at one point yesterday, before it was his turn to speak, Mr Galloway strode from the room, sending journalists of all nationalities rushing after him - only to discover that he was going to the lavatory. By condemning him in their report without interviewing him, the senators had already given Mr Galloway the upper hand. But not everything was in his favour. For a start, only two senators were present, sabotaging Mr Galloway's efforts to attack the whole lickspittle lot of them - and one of the two, the Democrat Carl Levin, had spent much of his opening statement attacking the hypocrisy of the US government in allegedly allowing American firms to benefit from Iraqi oil corruption. Even so, Mr Galloway was in his element, playing the role he relishes the most: the little guy squaring up for a fight with the establishment. For these purposes, Senator Coleman served symbolically to represent all the evil in the world - the entire Republican party, the conscience of George Bush, the US government and the British government, too: no wonder his weak smile looked so nauseous. "I gave my heart and soul to stop you committing the disaster that you did commit in invading Iraq," Mr Galloway told him. "Senator, in everything I said about Iraq, I turned out to be right and you turned out to be wrong." And yet for all his anti-establishment credentials, Mr Galloway is as practised as any of his New Labour enemies at squirming away from awkward questions. Under scrutiny by Senator Levin, he deployed a classic example of the bait-and-switch technique that is the government minister's best defence in difficult questioning. But Mr Galloway Goes To Washington had never really been an exercise in clarifying the facts. It was an exercise in giving Norm Coleman, and, by extension, the Bush administration, a black eye - mere days after the bloody nose that the Respect MP took credit for having given Tony Blair. And it went as well as Mr Galloway could have wished. http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,3604,1486417,00.html
And Galloway did come out punching.. it boggles the mind to listen to him.. and say what many have wanted to say.. This is priceless-->"You're a drink-soaked former-Trotskyist popinjay," Mr Galloway informed him. "Your hands are shaking. You badly need another drink," he added later, ignoring Mr Hitchens's questions and staring intently ahead. "And you're a drink-soaked..." Eventually Mr Hitchens gave up. "You're a real thug, aren't you?" he hissed, stalking away. <--- LOL!
Chrissie is a laff riot. God, I abhor that thug. Calling Galloway a thug is hilarious; Chrissie is the biggest thug around. When them Trotskyites turn Neocon, they really get vicious. See David horrorwitz for another example. Absolutists of any stripe are abhorrent. When I was a college freshman, I joined SDS, which was in its death throes by then. I quit within a few months, first when they attacked ROTC for no particular reason (hey, better to have Second Looies who have actually smoked a joint or listened to Jimi Hendrix than have those, at that time, total nazis from the West Points running things...more likely they'll keep their men alive) and then by opposing free speech. I went back to being an independent. Of course, that was during the Nixon years, so I was pretty much a Dem, just a couple of years after protesting against Humphrey, as in Dump the Hump, for his mindless support of the war. I was too young to vote for Nixon or Humphrey, but i would definitely have voted for Pat Paulson. I remember a time when Republicans and Democrats could agree on a lot of stuff, but the GOP has moved so far right and the Dems have too. I'd like to see some libertarian/progressive raprochement that could challenge these guys. I really like a lot of Dems (Durbin in particular, but Russ Feingold too) but I'm mainly an anti-Republican. I work for Dems, but they do and say the stupidest things. They allow gay marriage to become a big issue, when it is a very small one, compared to SS and war and shit. I think most people can agree that gays should have rights like insurance and hospital visitation and so on. At some point, marriage will probably happen, but, you know, who CARES? Is marriage such a big deal? And for abortion, I believe in a right to choose. But it should be RARE, REALLY RARE. We have the ability to absorb these extra children, but we will not spend the money to take care of them. I have a wonderful daughter because I do not believe in abortion. She's the best thing in my life, and I was in love with her long before she was born. But if we're not going to offer birth control advice to young, impressionable girls, if we are not going to help them through their pregnancies, if we are not willing to cut the red tape for adoption (including those AWFUL loving gay couples), then we are promoting abortion. It will happen, legally or illegally. Even McCain said he would send his daughter to Canada if it was outlawed. Since I am on a rant, this Jew-bashing has to stop. There are right-wing Jews, but the vast majority of Israelis are moderate or left-wing. They're just doing what our sheep do here, vote for the clown who STARTED the war because he will keep them SAFE. You all may remember that shithead Sharon stomping through the Mount, spitting on Palestinians. He started the Intifadah. Just like our punk and his overlords started the disastrous war we're fighting. They knew damn well there were no WMDs, but they need that fiction, along with the fictions of 911 and Al Qaeda connections to get the sheep to fight. We have to help the Dems overthrow the Rethugs now, and then form a REAL third party that can address the real issues, like tax reform, shoring up SS, crucifying the Enron types who rape our country, and backing off from military crap. We have nearly no need to intervene militarily anywhere in the world. But that would be bad for the military/industrial complex. Which, btw, was the driving force in Nazi Germany. /Rant off
#41. To: Mekons4 (#39)
My issues re Israel are political plain and simple.. when they effect the US policy..nothing more or less.. our tax $$, the spying etc.. those are my issues.. what others think or believe is their deal.. Regarding the Democrats.. IF there were a true difference in the parties, they would be DEMANDING investigations re the Iraq war, etc etc.. but they are not.. if you listen closely to the Democrates (not the constituency) the only complaint they seem to have is that the US went into Iraq unilaterally.. not multilaterly.. check out the Third Way.. the Progressive Democrats.. you will see there is little to no difference.. both parties have been co-opted by the neocon agenda.. there is no answer in either party.. and due to vote fraud voters have no choice in the matter anyway..
The GOP has not "moved right." The reason the GOP is the majority party today is that they have moved left. They have embraced big government and federal power whole heartedly. I don't know where you have been but the GOP has initiated the biggest social welfare programs since LBJ and is even now dispensing money through "churches" to run them. Now, you may not like that- but it is big government. You may not like how the GOP uses big government but it is doing so. They have not eliminated a single program and have increased the size of government hugely. Clinton seems like Coolidge in comparison to Bush on that score. The GOP is the majority party today because they dispense the federal goodies and keep the freebie wagon rolling even more than the dems but they do it in cultural ways you find distasteful - i.e. through Churches and through using corporatations to run their big gov handouts rather than a giant fed bureaucracy. The GOP way of big government is actaully fascist and more dangerous. At least the Dems use of BG is overt and in the form of a recognizable federal department or bureaucracy. The GOP is co- opting "private" business and making them dependent on government largesse and subject to all manner of federal intrustion, regulation, and control (witness our corporate media that is at the mercy of the federal stick and carrot). What the GOP offers- is the same and more federal handouts, freebies, giveaways, and bribes as the Dems do without the added baggage of being for every weirdo left wing fringe social movement of freak minority. The offer the handouts without insulting peoples values. That's it. And they scare voters with the Dems embrace of every whacko group out there every election cycle. The GOP has no intention of every "winning" the abortion issue or letting it be settled once and for all. They want it legal ultimatley- as it will forever be a fund raiser for them. Same with Gay marraiage and all these issues that have no business at the fed level. Without these bludgeon issues on the national level the GOP would be dead.
Top • Page Up • Full Thread • Page Down • Bottom/Latest“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 met him to try to bring about an end to sanctions, suffering and war.”
#6. To: Jethro Tull (#5)
Reuters quotes >> To the Honorable Jewish Senator from Minnesota...
#8. To: Eoghan (#6)
“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.”
#18. To: robin (#8)
#22. To: Burkeman1 (#18)
#24. To: All (#22)
#26. To: Mekons4 (#24)
#39. To: Zipporah (#26)
Replies to Comment # 39.
#56. To: Mekons4 (#39)
End Trace Mode for Comment # 39.