George Galloway blasts the Senate

Something we will only know at such time as the Senate manages to produce credible evidence against him.

Even if such an eventuality occurs, it will not lessen the validity of his charge that the members of the subcommittee smeared his name and found him guilty in absentia, and only thereafter invited him to answer the charges.

Walter Hinteler wrote:

Steve (as 41oo) wrote:

George Galloway was an amateur boxer in his youth.

So "Gorgeous" George Galloway vs. "Omnipotente" Committee: won a unanimous decision by the judges' scores of 78-75, 77-75, and 78-74.

Yes. But one wonders if he only won the round.

Who?

Ticomaya wrote:

Who?

Ah, you saw it then. The committee invited him to speak. He spoke.

Something we will only know at such time as the Senate manages to produce credible evidence against him.

Even if such an eventuality occurs, it will not lessen the validity of his charge that the members of the subcommittee smeared his name and found him guilty in absentia, and only thereafter invited him to answer the charges.

9 Freedom of speech

That the freedom of speech and debates or proceedings in Parliament ought not to be impeached or questioned in any court or place out of Parliament.

Ticomaya wrote:

Walter Hinteler wrote:

Steve (as 41oo) wrote:

George Galloway was an amateur boxer in his youth.

So "Gorgeous" George Galloway vs. "Omnipotente" Committee: won a unanimous decision by the judges' scores of 78-75, 77-75, and 78-74.

Yes. But one wonders if he only won the round.

So you did not watch anything but ...

Ticomaya wrote:

Who?

McTag wrote:

Ticomaya wrote:

Who?

Ah, you saw it then. The committee invited him to speak. He spoke.

So winning a seat for his new party (called Respect membership : one person, G Galloway)

Nimh:
Just to clarify a point regarding the above though - I have no problem whatsoever with groups simultaneously espousing deeply religious and leftist beliefs. I've been arguing here repetitively enough that the American left should encourage rather than exclude devout, but progressive Christians.

But I do feel very uneasy about seeing Trots, who surely dont really believe a word of it, try to haul the far Left into some opportunistically redefined values along conservative religious lines just to haul in the Muslim vote. I dont want that kind of politics to become the direction for the Left to head in, not even the far Left, as it will fully discredit it.

For one, because I doubt the Muslim Brotherhood and the like are leftwing much beyond their opposition to the Iraq war. This way, what you get is no more than a ragtag coalition of interest groups. Moreover, there's a distinct trap here (we have the same with Milli Görüs, a Turkish conservative-religious group). Of course, it's only logical for leftists to rally to the defence of immigrant and minority groups in the face of racism and intolerance. But in Holland we are now getting to find out that the alliance that thus emerged, somewhere along the way, between mosques and leftwing parties isnt necessarily all that logical.

The Gallaways of the world have misled us and foisted on us a culture of corruption.

If the US senators have said that Gallaway is guilty, then he has to be so. The verdict is already out- GALLAWAY IS GUILTY of every crime he is being accused by the senators. There is no room for doubt in my mind, which is stuffed full of dark theories on Gallaway's escapades.

I ask everyone in this blog-site till when are we to tolerate these thieving Gallaways, who work not to fulfill the interests of the people but to line up their own pockets with ill-gotten wealth from the likes of Saddam.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,3604,1485546,00.html

US 'backed illegal Iraqi oil deals'

Report claims blind eye was turned to sanctions busting by American firms

Julian Borger and Jamie Wilson in Washington
Tuesday May 17, 2005
The Guardian

The United States administration turned a blind eye to extensive sanctions-busting in the prewar sale of Iraqi oil, according to a new Senate investigation.

A report released last night by Democratic staff on a Senate investigations committee presents documentary evidence that the Bush administration was made aware of illegal oil sales and kickbacks paid to the Saddam Hussein regime but did nothing to stop them.

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.

"The United States was not only aware of Iraqi oil sales which violated UN sanctions and provided the bulk of the illicit money Saddam Hussein obtained from circumventing UN sanctions," the report said. "On occasion, the United States actually facilitated the illicit oil sales.

The report is likely to ease pressure from conservative Republicans on Kofi Annan to resign from his post as UN secretary general.

The new findings are also likely to be raised when Mr Galloway appears before the Senate subcommittee on investigations today.

The Respect MP for Bethnal Green and Bow arrived yesterday in Washington demanding an apology from the Senate for what he called the "schoolboy dossier" passed off as an investigation against him.

"It was full of holes, full of falsehoods and full of value judgments that are apparently only shared here in Washington," he said at Washington Dulles airport.

He told Reuters: "I have no expectation of justice ... I come not as the accused but as the accuser. I am [going] to show just how absurd this report is."

Mr Galloway has denied allegations that he profited from Iraqi oil sales and will come face to face with the committee in what promises to be one of the most highly charged pieces of political theatre seen in Washington for some time.

Yesterday's report makes two principal allegations against the Bush administration. Firstly, it found the US treasury failed to take action against a Texas oil company, Bayoil, which facilitated payment of "at least $37m in illegal surcharges to the Hussein regime".

The surcharges were a violation of the UN Oil For Food programme, by which Iraq was allowed to sell heavily discounted oil to raise money for food and humanitarian supplies. However, Saddam was allowed to choose which companies were given the highly lucrative oil contracts. Between September 2000 and September 2002 (when the practice was stopped) the regime demanded kickbacks of 10 to 30 US cents a barrel in return for oil allocations.

In its second main finding, the report said the US military and the state department gave a tacit green light for shipments of nearly 8m barrels of oil bought by Jordan, a vital American ally, entirely outside the UN-monitored Oil For Food system. Jordan was permitted to buy some oil directly under strict conditions but these purchases appeared to be under the counter.

The report details a series of efforts by UN monitors to obtain information about Bayoil's oil shipments in 2001 and 2002, and the lack of help provided by the US treasury.

After repeated requests over eight months from the UN and the US state department, the treasury's office of foreign as sets control wrote to Bayoil in May 2002, requesting a report on its transactions but did not "request specific information by UN or direct Bayoil to answer the UN's questions".

Bayoil's owner, David Chalmers, has been charged over the company's activities. His lawyer Catherine Recker told the Washington Post: "Bayoil and David Chalmers [said] they have done nothing illegal and will vigorously defend these reckless accusations."

The Jordanian oil purchases were shipped in the weeks before the war, out of the Iraqi port of Khor al-Amaya, which was operating without UN approval or surveillance.

Investigators found correspondence showing that Odin Marine Inc, the US company chartering the seven huge tankers which picked up the oil at Khor al-Amaya, repeatedly sought and received approval from US military and civilian officials that the ships would not be confiscated by US Navy vessels in the Maritime Interdiction Force (MIF) enforcing the embargo.

Odin was reassured by a state department official that the US "was aware of the shipments and has determined not to take action".

The company's vice president, David Young, told investigators that a US naval officer at MIF told him that he "had no objections" to the shipments. "He said that he was sorry he could not say anything more. I told him I completely understood and did not expect him to say anything more," Mr Young said.

An executive at Odin Maritime confirmed the senate account of the oil shipments as "correct" but declined to comment further.

It was not clear last night whether the Democratic report would be accepted by Republicans on the Senate investigations committee.

The Pentagon declined to comment. The US representative's office at the UN referred inquiries to the state department, which fail to return calls.

Galloway: The man who took on America

How did one maverick MP manage to outgun a committee of senior US politicians so successfully? And did he make any lasting impact? Rupert Cornwell reports from Washington

19 May 2005


It may not have been the "mother of all smokescreens" - as George Galloway memorably described the congressional investigation into the Iraq oil-for-food scandal - but his appearance certainly underlined the mother of all culture gaps between the parliamentary traditions of Britain and America.

We tend to see politics as a public bloodsport. In the US politics is as brutal as anywhere. But the violence usually takes place off-stage, in the lobbying process, in the money game, in the ruthless manipulation of scandal. True, every four years there are presidential election candidates' "debates". But - with the exception of Bill Clinton - every recent American president would have been slaughtered weekly if he had to face Prime Minister's Questions. On the public stage, US politicians are not accustomed to serious challenge.

Take Norm Coleman. He is a smooth, upwardly mobile Republican senator who is making a name for himself at the helm of the Permanent Sub-Committee for Investigations, not least because of his call for Kofi Annan to step down as United Nations secretary general over the scandal. As Mr Coleman knows, no American politician ever lost a vote by bashing the UN.

A telegenic former big city mayor, he looks younger than his 55 years. Every senator, it is said, looks in the mirror and sees a future president. And who knows, maybe a White House run is in Mr Coleman's future. But on Tuesday, to UK and US observers alike, he looked way out of his depth, manifestly unprepared for what was coming when Mr Galloway began to testify.

Perhaps he believed that a smooth ride would be ensured by the traditional deference accorded the Senate (which is fond of referring to itself, with barely a trace of irony, as "the world's greatest deliberative body"). In fact, proceedings only served to underline the average senator or congressman's ignorance of the world beyond America, be it the underlying realities of the Middle East, or the polemical ways of British public life.

"If in fact he lied to this committee, there will have to be consequences," said Mr Coleman after the encounter, in the manner of a petulant schoolboy outgunned in an argument, but who gamely insists on having the last word, however feeble, in an attempt to retrieve his dignity.

And like the hapless junior senator from Minnesota, the US media too did not know quite what had hit it. For all its imperfections, Congress - in particular the Senate part of it - commands a rigid respect. Coverage of it tends to be strait-laced and humourless. Into this primly arranged china shop crashed George Galloway, to deliver a public broadside against US policy in Iraq, and the US system, unmatched since Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11.

In Britain, the prospect of such a confrontation would have sketch-writers and columnists salivating days in advance. But that is not the American way. Honourable exception should be made for the New York Post, Murdoch-owned and the nearest thing in the US to a Fleet Street tabloid. "Brit Fries Senators in Oil" was the headline on a news story that noted the "stunning audacity" of Mr Galloway's performance, how he had caught Mr Coleman and his colleagues "flatfooted" (only one of whom was left when the chairman brought the embarrassment to an end).

A brief perusal of the US press suggests that the Post's Andrea Peyser was also the only columnist to weigh in. As might be expected, she excoriated Mr Galloway as a thug and a bully, "a lefty lackey for butchers". Mr Coleman and his subcommittee had let the side down, she wrote. "Our Senators did not pipe up. Rather, they assumed the look of frightened little boys, caught with their pants around their ankles, nervously awaiting punishment." She concluded: "It's time to take the gloves off, senators. Kick this viper where it hurts."

But anyone expecting such colour in the more august broadsheets will have been severely disappointed. The Washington Post and The New York Times devoted only inside-page coverage. The Times noted that Mr Coleman, despite being a former prosecutor, seemed "flummoxed" by Mr Galloway's "aggressive posture and tone". Both singled out the MP's debating skill. It is a skill on which, alas, American politics place little premium.

Much the same went for television coverage. CNN's presenters smiled gamely as they ran clips of the juiciest Galloway invective. Plainly though, they too were bemused. This sort of thing does not occur in the US Congress - and that of course was his achievement, to turn the usual rules of such hearings on their head.

Normally, the committee members dominate proceedings, armed with investigative material furnished by their handsomely financed staff, and expect respect bordering on veneration from those they summon. When the matter at hand is as contentious as the Iraqi oil-for-food scandal, most witnesses appear with a phalanx of lawyers, advising them when to "take the Fifth" and thus avoid potentially incriminating testimony.

Not so George Galloway. Not a lawyer was in sight, and even if one had been whispering in his ear, he almost certainly would not have listened. Instead, he took the battle to his accusers. Mr Coleman looked as if he had not been spoken to like that since his father caught him cheating on high school homework.

Yesterday, 12 hours after Mr Galloway left town, the legislative cultural gap was again in evidence as normal business resumed on the Senate floor. The topic could not have been more important or more venomous - a row over judicial filibusters that threatens to overturn 200 years of tradition, and bring the chamber's business to a virtual halt.

But Bill Frist and Harry Reid, the Senate majority and minority leaders, droned on as if they were introducing an amendment on the Highway Financing Bill. As usual, the cameras remained fixed on the speaker. By convention, panning shots are banned, for the simple reason that these important gentlemen would be seen delivering their Philippics to rows of empty benches. But then again, that is how America likes its formal politics; sedate, dignified, eschewing the sort of personal attack delivered by Mr Galloway.

Long, long ago, in the 1950 World Cup in Uruguay, the unfancied US scored a 1-0 victory over an all-conquering England football team. The performance on Capitol Hill of Mr Galloway (although he is anything but a Sassenach) might be seen as some belated revenge for that humiliation.

But, if truth be told, the political shock was little more noticed here - and is likely to have as little enduring impact - than that never-to-be forgotten sporting upset half a century ago.