THE US, THE UN AND IRAQ VI

Yesterday, Mr Galloway issued a statement headed "For immediate use" making a series of claims, a number of which referred to this paper. Here are the claims, and the responses of this newspaper.


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George Galloway: This is the same story, based on the same dubious sources and documents that I'm suing The Daily Telegraph over.

The Telegraph: It's not. The Telegraph's reporter David Blair discovered files in the Iraqi foreign ministry in April last year. The papers purported to show that Mr Galloway had met an Iraqi secret service agent on Boxing Day 1999 and had asked for more financial support from Saddam's regime for his "projects and future plans for the benefit of Iraq".

According to the papers, he had allegedly already received at least £375,000 from the Iraqi authorities. We carried his denials in full at the time.

In January this year Iraqi newspaper Al Mada published a report based on an entirely separate set of documents that purported to record the 270 oil voucher beneficiaries.

Claude Hankes-Drielsma, an adviser to the Iraqi Governing Council (IGC) and a former senior executive with the auditors Price Waterhouse, giving evidence to the US Congress this week, said that the 270 names came from an IGC document that had been leaked to Al Mada. It had been drawn up by Oil Ministry officials from documentation he believed was genuine.

Then too, there's this:



Google it yourself; no news article asserts the Al-Mada list has been found to be a forgery. A general Websearch will turn up plenty of allegations, but the Al-Mada list appears, at least to the satisfaction of legitimate journalism, and The US Congressional committee investigating the matter, using that list among other documents and testimony, to be an accurate representation of information gleaned from files of unambiguous provenance.

Thanks for contacting Mr Galloway's office Walter (you are braver than me).

George Galloway MP has been cleared of any wrongdoing over an appeal fund he set up.

A year-long investigation by the Charity Commission found that money raised by the Mariam Appeal to help sick Iraqis was spent correctly.

But the Commission warned that the appeal should have been registered as a charity. Mr Galloway said he was delighted with the investigation's outcome.

M-W says "lie" imputes dishonesty. But that's not the point of contention.

Main Entry: 3 lie
Function: verb
Inflected Form(s): lied; ly·ing /'lI-i[ng]/
Etymology: Middle English, from Old English lEogan; akin to Old High German liogan to lie, Old Church Slavonic lugati
intransitive senses
1 : to make an untrue statement with intent to deceive
2 : to create a false or misleading impression
transitive senses : to bring about by telling lies <lied his way out of trouble>
synonyms LIE, PREVARICATE, EQUIVOCATE, PALTER, FIB mean to tell an untruth. LIE is the blunt term, imputing dishonesty <lied about where he had been>. PREVARICATE softens the bluntness of LIE by implying quibbling or confusing the issue <during the hearings the witness did his best to prevaricate>. EQUIVOCATE implies using words having more than one sense so as to seem to say one thing but intend another <equivocated endlessly in an attempt to mislead her inquisitors>. PALTER implies making unreliable statements of fact or intention or insincere promises <a swindler paltering with his investors>. FIB applies to a telling of a trivial untruth <fibbed about the price of the new suit>.

The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition by Houghton Mifflin Company lists both the intentional and the unintentional meaning of lie. Here is their unintentional one:

Quote:

To convey a false image or impression: Appearances often lie.

You can't argue that "apprearances" have intent.

Main Entry: 1 ad ho·mi·nem
Pronunciation: (')ad-'hä-m&-"nem, -n&m
Function: adjective
Etymology: New Latin, literally, to the person
1 : appealing to feelings or prejudices rather than intellect
2 : marked by an attack on an opponent's character rather than by an answer to the contentions made

I would point out it would be far more likely that a current news query would yield results concerning fraud relating the Al-Mada List, should any exist, than to find mention of the Piltdown Hoax ... that was pretty damed weak on your part, CdK.

However the Al-Mada list, despite vigorous challenge, has not been discredited, as were, relatively easily and in short order, documents purported to indict Mr. Galloway and others. I eagerly await finding out where this goes. If it turns out there's no "There" there, then, fine; I suspect, however, there will be a "There" there, and that that "There" is gonna be a very big "There", thickly populated with some very big names.

That statement -- allegedly according to your lexicon, American Heritage® Dictionary -- is a falsity and is for that reason a lie.

Craven de Kere wrote:

You can't argue that "apprearances" have intent.

I don't but you appear to me to. For example, you implied that because some of the members of Bush's current administration recommended to Clinton that Clinton remove Saddam, Bush appears to have decided prior to 9/11/2001 to remove Saddam.

Oh yes, I anticipate your denial already. True you did not write exactly that. You merely raised the idea as a possibility? You did not intend that anyone actually suspect Bush of making that decision before 9/11/2001?

You also appear to see a goal post moving kind of distinction...

You tell falsities.

Because of that, according to your lexicon you are a teller of lies; that is, you are a liar.

I think the wisest course for me and others is to treat your judgments about the character of others as mere space consuming lying propaganda or lying ad hominem.

There is a terminology for this type of logical inconsistancy but I've forgotten what its called.

You seem to have adopted ...

I hold said opinion.

Yes thanks paradox will do, but I was thinking of something else. Going to sleep on it..