← Autodidact Archive · Original Dissent · Blond Knight
Thread ID: 18285 | Posts: 19 | Started: 2005-05-18
2005-05-18 01:48 | User Profile
[url]http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,156803,00.html[/url]
British Lawmaker to Congress: Back Off
Tuesday, May 17, 2005
By Sharon Kehnemui Liss
WASHINGTON ââ¬â The firebrand British member of Parliament who has been accused of accepting oil vouchers as part of the Oil-for-Food (search) scandal told U.S. lawmakers Tuesday he did nothing wrong and accused the United States of diverting attention from their own crimes in Iraq by implicating him.
George Galloway (search) said he met Saddam Hussein "as many times as [Defense Secretary] Donald Rumsfeld met him. The difference is Donald Rumsfeld met him to sell him guns and give him maps.
"I met [Saddam] to try and persuade him to allow U.N. weapons inspectors back in the country, a rather better use of the meetings than your own secretary of defense," Galloway told the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Permanent Investigations Subcommittee.
Galloway, who arrived in the United States late Monday night, argued that documents suggesting he got the vouchers are bogus and that the Iraqi officials who ratted him out are lying.
"You have the gall to quote a source without ever having asked me if the allegations were true, that I am the 'owner of a company which has made substantial profits from oil for food,'" Galloway said, noting that he owns no companies besides a media firm in London.
"You had no business to carry a quotation utterly unsubstantiated and falsely implying otherwise," he said. "You've already found me guilty before I have had a chance to come here and defend myself."
Galloway previously told reporters that he feels the accusations are a political setup arranged by the Bush administration and Republicans who strongly supported the president's war in Iraq. He also acknowledged that his relationship with former Iraq Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz (search) was friendly.
[B]Prior to the hearing, Galloway blasted subcommittee chairman Sen. Norm Coleman (search), R-Minn., and his colleagues as being a "group of Christian fundamentalists and Zionist activists under the chairmanship of neo-con George Bush and the right-wing hawks."[/B]
Coleman named Galloway as the recipient of payoffs totaling 20 million barrels of oil through the corrupt Oil-for-Food program.
Speaking at the beginning of the hearing, Coleman said Galloway was allotted 20 million barrels of oil to enrich himself in exchange for his support for Saddam Hussein's regime. Majority Counsel for the committee Mark Greenblatt then testified that the barrels came in six phases during the Oil-for-Food program.
"Saddam Hussein's chief lieutenant, Vice President Taha Yassin Ramadan, confirmed in an interview with the subcommittee that Galloway received allocations. In addition ... Ramadan confirmed that Galloway was granted allocations, quote, 'because of his opinions about Iraq. He wants to lift embargo against Iraq.'"
Other Saddam regime officials confirmed that Galloway received allocations, Greenblatt said. He added that one document "indicates that the recipient of this oil allocation was Mariam Appeal (search), the foundation established by George Galloway, ostensibly to help a four-year-old Iraqi girl named Mariam who was suffering from leukemia. Therefore, it appears that George Galloway used a children's cancer foundation to conceal his oil transaction."
He then said the transactions were conducted through Galloway's agent, Fawaz Zuraiqat, a Jordanian who is president of Middle East Advanced Semiconductor Inc. (search)
Galloway called the accusations a lie.
"This is beyond the realm of the ridiculous," Galloway said, denying additional allegations that Galloway paid $300,000 for surcharges for the transaction through Mariam Appeal.
As he got off the plane in Washington on Monday night, Galloway denied the allegations and said the evidence against him was forged. But in the hearing on Tuesday, when presented with the documents exhibited by Groves, Galloway would not say one way or the other whether he thought the materials were forgeries. He did say the information in them is "fake."
An American Connection
The Oil-for-Food program, which ran from 1996-2003, was designed to let Saddam's government sell oil in exchange for humanitarian goods to help the Iraqi people cope with crippling U.N. sanctions.
But Saddam peddled influence by awarding favored politicians, journalists and others vouchers for oil that could then be resold at a profit.
Coleman's subcommittee has released three reports since Thursday exploring how Saddam made billions in illegal oil sales despite U.N. sanctions imposed in 1991 after Iraq's invasion of Kuwait. Subcommittee's staffers also testified about other illegal transactions committed by Russian, French and American individuals and businessmen who sought to profit from Iraq's oil trade.
In a report released Monday night, investigators alleged that Washington looked the other way as Texas oil company Bayoil (search) bought Iraqi crude and sold it to American refineries. As a member of the U.N. Security Council, the United States allowed Saddam to pocket billions of dollars smuggling oil to Jordan, Turkey and Syria, it said.
Click here to read the report about Iraqi oil allocations to the Russian presidential council (pdf).
Counsel for minority staff Dan Berkovitz testified that from September 2000 until late September 2002, the Iraqi government demanded that purchasers of Iraqi oil under the Oil-for-Food program pay a per-barrel surcharge to the Iraqi regime. The surcharges were illegal because they raised the sales price of Iraqi oil that was determined by the United Nations. The surcharges were also paid into accounts outside the control of the United Nations, violating U.N. sanctions, Berkovitz said.
Iraq earned $228 million from the surcharges, including about $4.7 million from U.S. company Bayoil and former Russian official Vladimir Zhirinovsky (search), Greenblatt told the panel. In all, Berkovitz said that the 525 million barrels of Iraqi oil ââ¬â about 660,000 barrels per day ââ¬â that ended up in U.S. hands during the two-year surcharge period amounted to $118 million in illegal surcharges paid to Iraq by the United States. He pointed out that U.S. money was not paid directly to Iraq, but to oil traders, allocation holders and various other middlemen that served as conduits for the Iraqi Oil Ministry's State Oil Marketing Organization (SOMO).
"This means that oil imported into the U.S. financed about 52 percent of the illegal surcharges paid to the Hussein regime ... These percentages roughly correspond to the percentages of Iraqi oil sent to the U.S. and elsewhere during this period," Berkovitz said, adding that Bayoil appears to be the only company that knew it was paying the surcharge.
Bayoil was responsible for importing 200 million of the 525 million barrels of oil received by the United States, he said.
The committee singled out the U.S. Office of Foreign Assets Control, which the United Nations repeatedly warned about Bayoil's scheme. It cited an apparent misunderstanding in which U.S. authorities assumed the United Nations would monitor individual companies, while at the United Nations, Oil-for-Food officials thought that was the responsibility of national governments.
The end result was that before the United Nations managed to squeeze out the surcharges imposed by Iraq, the United States failed to stop the illegal payments, Berkovitz said.
"The State Department and OFAC took no additional steps to ensure no American companies were paying surcharges, or even to inquire about the nature of the trade in Iraqi oil. U.S. authorities also failed to respond to requests by United Nations officials for assistance in obtaining information about potential sanctions violations by Bayoil," he said.
In April, Bayoil USA owner David Chalmers (search) and three other executives were indicted in U.S. District Court for allegedly funneling kickbacks to Saddam. Chalmers has denied any wrongdoing.
But Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., ranking minority member on the subcommittee, said responsibility for the misdeeds extends far beyond Chalmers and company.
"There's a pattern here of erratic and inconsistent enforcement of sanctions on Iraq. On the one hand, the United States is at the U.N. trying to stop Iraq from imposing illegal surcharges on oil-for-food contracts; on the other hand, the U.S. ignored red flags that some U.S. companies might be paying those same illegal surcharges," Levin said.
Aside from Bayoil's alleged violations, Berkovitz said that a different U.S. company that chartered ships for Jordan called the U.S. Commerce Department when it became concerned that a ship was being used to transport illegally 7.7 million barrels of Iraqi oil destined for Jordan, which paid $53 million in cash for them. The company's general counsel was later told by a State Department official that the department was "aware of the shipments and has determined not to take action."
The Russian and French Connections
As for Zhirinovsky, the ultranationalist former parliamentarian traded on his longtime friendship with Hussein and mutual dislike for the West to win 75 million barrels in oil allocations that resulted in profits to Iraq of $8.6 million, according to Greenblatt. Zhirinovsky's distaste for the United States did not stop him from dealing with Bayoil, however, and he assigned his allocation of 5 million barrels "in exchange for a hefty commission" of about $850,000.
In other transactions, Bayoil paid commissions for oil to companies that the committee could not locate or identify. Because Bayoil already had a deal with the Russian and had used code words to describe its relationship to Zhirinovsky, "it is reasonable to conclude that those payments were, in fact, commissions to Vladimir Zhirinovsky," Greenblatt said.
Greenblatt also presented documents that showed that former French Interior Minister Charles Pasqua was granted allocations from Iraq, but fearing public scandal, he had his agent, Bernard Guillet, sign for the deal. Guillet was detained two weeks ago for charges relating to Oil-for-Food transactions, he said
2005-05-18 02:01 | User Profile
What would it take to get someone with Mr. Galloway's cajones into the U.S. Senate?
More on this story:[url]http://www.knoxstudio.com/shns/story.cfm?pk=OIL4FOOD-05-17-05&cat=AN[/url]
British lawmaker spars with Senate panel over oil trading
By KEVIN DIAZ McClatchy Newspapers May 17, 2005
WASHINGTON - A member of the British Parliament on Tuesday called a Senate inquiry "the mother of all smokescreens," denying accusations he had profited from a United Nations oil-for-food scheme in Iraq.
The British lawmaker, George Galloway, was met with skepticism from Sen. Norm Coleman, R-Minn., the chairman of the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, as well as from Sen. Carl Levin of Michigan, the ranking Democrat.
"It strains any concept of reasonableness for him to assert that he didn't know, or wouldn't answer the question, whether his named representative in Iraq was involved in trading for oil," Coleman said.
The public sparring was part of an unusual appearance in Congress by Galloway, one of Britain's foremost opponents of the war in Iraq. He flew to Washington to answer allegations that he accepted paper vouchers for millions of barrels of Iraqi oil - which could be resold at immense profit - in exchange for opposing U.N. sanctions against Saddam Hussein's regime.
Galloway, an outspoken critic of British Prime Minster Tony Blair, a U.S. war ally, likened Coleman to a "schoolboy howler," making allegations against him he said had no basis in fact.
Galloway contended that the charges are a diversion from the actions of U.S. companies such as Texas-based Bayoil, which has been indicted for paying millions of dollars for the right to sell embargoed Iraqi oil. He also said it is a distraction from the continuing insurgency that has pinned down U.S. troops in Iraq, and the more than $8 billion in contract dollars that have gone missing during the U.S. occupation.
Coleman, who supports the war in Iraq, avoided debating Galloway. He chose instead to walk the British lawmaker through a half-dozen Iraqi oil-for-food records purporting to show his name or that of his appointed representative, Middle East businessman Fawaz Zuraiqat.
"They show Galloway was the allocation (voucher) holder, and I don't think he did anything to challenge that," Coleman said.
Galloway suggested that the documents could be forgeries, backed up by jailed regime officials, including former Iraqi Vice President Taha Yassin Ramadan, who told committee investigators that the vouchers were "compensation for support."
[B]Previous press accounts of Galloway's dealings in Iraq were found to be based on forged documents. But Coleman said his committee's reports are based on different records, backed up by former regime officials with no reason to lie.[/B]
"They were not pointing fingers or naming names for leniency," Coleman said. "They thought they did nothing wrong."
In an opening statement intended to echo the era of the anti-communist crusader Joseph McCarthy, Galloway said, "I am not now, nor have I ever been, an oil trader."
But Galloway could not say the same for Zuraiqat, a close friend and top campaign contributor.
"He may well have signed an oil contract. It had nothing to do with me," Galloway said.
Coleman and Levin expressed incredulity at Galloway's contention that he never asked Zuraiqat if he traded in oil.
Documents made public by the committee identify Zuraiqat as Galloway's Iraq representative in the children's leukemia charity Zuraiqat helped form, called Mariam's Appeal.
Mariam's Appeal, along with several of Zuraiqat's company names, are listed on records documenting allocations worth 20 million barrels of oil from 2000 to 2003. Committee investigators have suggested that the leukemia charity was a cover to conceal oil payments. But the committee has produced no financial records so far to document specific payments to Galloway or to Mariam's Appeal.
The voucher records are part of a report the committee released last week accusing Galloway and former French Interior Minister Charles Pasqua of profiting from the U.N. oil-for-food vouchers, many of which ended up in the hands of foreign politicians and journalists who showed sympathy for Saddam's regime.
A follow-up report released Monday by the committee's Democrats also alleges that the Bush administration looked the other way as Bayoil, the indicted Texas energy firm, paid Saddam's government $37 million in illegal kickbacks to trade in Iraqi oil.
Coleman and Levin have asked administration officials for a more detailed account of the transactions, as well as of a separate Iraqi oil shipment to Jordan on the eve of the war, apparently with the approval of Defense and State department officials.
In yet another report released over the weekend, the committee said several Russian leaders also have received millions of dollars in Iraqi oil allocations from Saddam's government in hopes of weakening U.N. sanctions against Iraq.
Among the officials the committee implicated are Alexander Voloshin, former chief of staff to President Vladimir Putin, and ultranationalist Russian lawmaker Vladimir Zhirinovsky.
Coleman has cited the revelations to back up his call for the resignation of U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan, who he says should be held accountable for the widespread abuses of the U.N.'s oil-for-food program.
The program was set up by the United Nations to let Saddam's government sell oil in exchange for humanitarian goods during the period of U.N. sanctions following the 1991 Gulf War.
Since then, a number of investigations, including Coleman's, have found that Saddam used the $64 billion program to peddle influence with officials in the U.N. and in foreign governments.
(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service.)
2005-05-18 02:13 | User Profile
[url]http://news.independent.co.uk/world/politics/story.jsp?story=639336[/url]
Galloway fights corner on accuser's home patch
By Andrew Buncombe in Washington
18 May 2005
George Galloway had warned he was coming to Washington to make a spirited defence of his reputation, and even before entering the US Senate he made sure to deliver one or two decent punches.
Standing on the corner of Constitution and 3rd, a fresh spring breeze at his heels and a pack of television cameras in his sights, he quickly provided a taste of what was about to come.
"I am determined now that I am here, to be not the accused but the accuser. These people are involved in the mother of all smoke screens," he declared, quickly getting into his stride.
[B]Within a moment he had found his rhythm and his well-practised descriptive powers were flowing. The people he was about to confront were "neo-cons", "pro-Israel", "pro-war". They were trying to "distract" attention from an illegal war. Their so-called "evidence" amounted to nothing more than a "schoolboy dossier". Before turning heel and marching into the committee room ready to deliver a tongue-lashing, he added one more verbal blast for good measure. "Lickspittle."[/B]
Mr Galloway, a former Labour MP, a constant friend of often unpopular causes and the newly elected Respect MP for Bethnal Green and Bow, had come to Capitol Hill at the invitation of a Senate committee that had accused him of benefiting from oil allocations meted out by Saddam Hussein's regime. In a violation of the UN oil-for-food programme, he had been given allocations for 20 million barrels of oil, alleged the Senate Permanent Sub-Committee on Investigations, because of his opposition to UN sanctions and his support of Saddam's regime. While the committee admitted it had no physical proof that Mr Galloway had "cashed" the allocations, it said the implications were clear. Furthermore, it said there was evidence Mr Galloway had used the foundation he established to help a four-year-old Iraqi girl suffering from leukaemia to conceal the payment of at least one allocation.
Nonsense, declared Mr Galloway. The accusations made last week were not new, he said, and he had already won a libel action against The Daily Telegraph which had made similar claims. He was ready to take up the invitation of the committee chairman, Senator Norm Coleman, to fly to the US and give evidence to the committee. He would let them have it with both barrels.
If Mr Galloway was ready for a showdown by the time he walked into the airy and wood-panelled Room 106 of the Senate's Dirksen building yesterday, he was going to have to cool his heels for a while. He was not the first witness and for almost two hours he listened as officials outlined various accusations directed not just at him and the former French foreign minister Charles Pasqua, but also against the Russian politician Vladimir Zhirinovsky, a Texas company that had traded oil with Iraq, as well as the US administration of George Bush for turning a blind eye to such sanction-busting.
He finally took the witnesses table, in front of a horseshoe bench where the committee sat, at 11.25am. How would he address the committee? Would he be polite or scathing, friendly or fearsome? Would he fall back on that old standby - Sir, I salute your courage, your strength, your indefatigability - a line he infamously delivered to Saddam in 1994 and over which he claims he is repeatedly quoted out of context. [B] In the end Mr Galloway settled for delivering a stern and steadfast defence, highlighting the lack of hard evidence against him and claiming that the real criminals were the British and US governments, which had overseen a sanctions regime against Iraq that he said had led to the deaths of 1 million Iraqi children.[/B]
"Mr Chairman, I am not now, nor have I ever been an oil trader and neither has anyone been on my behalf," he said. "I have never seen a barrel of oil, owned one, bought one, sold one, and neither has anybody on my behalf." He tore into Mr Coleman's 22-page report, saying that to describe it as containing "errors" was being polite. [B]He said he had met Saddam not on[/B] [B]"many" occasions, as it alleged, but twice. "As a matter of fact I have met Saddam Hussein exactly the same number of times that [US Defence Secretary] Donald Rumsfeld met him. The difference is that Donald Rumsfeld met him to sell him guns." To Mr Coleman, he added: "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."[/B]
Mr Galloway admitted that his associate Fawaz Zureikat, who was chairman of the Mariam Appeal foundation, had been involved in trade dealings with the Iraqi regime. He admitted that Mr Zureikat had provided the foundation with ã370,000 but said he never asked where the money came from.
Mr Coleman, the freshman senator from Minnesota, had probably never encountered anyone like Mr Galloway. Most witnesses who appear before such committees are either fawning or deferential. Mr Galloway was neither.
Rather he questioned the senators' moral right to be questioning him, someone who had "protested [against Saddam's regime] outside the Iraqi embassy". Neither were US politicians who raised funds from all manner of sources, he said, in any position to question how he funded the Mariam Appeal. Their sources, he continued, were former Iraqi officials now imprisoned in Abu Ghraib jail and documents provided to them by the "convicted fraudster", Ahmed Chalabi.
"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 Iraq," he said. "What counts is not the names on the paper. What counts is where's the money, senator? Who paid me money, senator? 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."
Mr Galloway did not have it all his own way. While he clearly had the better of Mr Coleman, who seemed to adopt an awkward, nervous smile for most of the morning, the committee's deputy chairman, Senator Carl Levin, appeared less intimidated. And in terms of the knock-about contest that was taking place, he landed his own blow when pointing out that he had not, as the British MP alleged, voted for the war in Iraq.
Overall, however, it would have to be an odd judge who did not score this transatlantic clash in Mr Galloway's favour. Not only did he use the hearing as an opportunity to promote his anti-war stance, but he highlighted the committee's lack of hard evidence to back up the claims it had made against him. In the arena of public opinion where he is trying to defend himself against those allegations, that must have counted for something.
"I'd rather not be here," he said. "But I was determined to be here and to be heard."
2005-05-18 02:42 | User Profile
Here is a video of Galloway's testimony before the Senate in RealPlayer format (45 minutes):
[url]http://news.bbc.co.uk/media/avdb/news_web/video/9012da68000cfe0/bb/09012da68000d153_bb_16x9.ram[/url]
Shorter version: [url]http://www.edwardsdavid.com/BushVideos/msnbc_uk_galloway_blisters_us_on_iraq_050517-01.rm[/url] Shorter version (Audio only): [url]http://www.edwardsdavid.com/BushVideos/msnbc_uk_galloway_blisters_us_on_iraq_050517-01.mp3[/url]
It's great political theatre. The first few minutes are a bit tedious (while the accusations against him are being read out) but once he starts his testimony it really kicks into high gear. Great stuff!
BBC article:
[url]http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/4556113.stm[/url]
It should be acknowledged that Galloway is basically a communist, who has openly praised Castro and called the end of the USSR "the worst moment of my life", but he put on a great show here.
2005-05-18 12:34 | User Profile
RR,
Thanks for finding the whole transcript. I was curious to see how the others there took this.
I certainly have to agree with you. He gave those hyopcritical jerks and the disgusting Norm Coleman the hell they deserved. Too bad Galloway has a number of screwed up ideas. He'd be a good one to have on your side in a fight. I hope in this one case he prevails.
2005-05-18 18:50 | User Profile
[COLOR=Red][SIZE=5]Mr Coleman, the freshman senator from Minnesota, had probably never encountered anyone like Mr Galloway. Most witnesses who appear before such committees are either fawning or deferential. Mr Galloway was neither.[/SIZE][/COLOR]
Galloway whipped jewboy Coleman 'til he shit, then whipped him for shitting! Whatever his other views are, he's one hell of a man. :clap:
2005-05-18 19:01 | User Profile
Can someone please tell me who was bombed, slaughtered, beheaded, or shot as a result of the Oil for Food "scandal"?
That might be a good question for Galloway to propose.
2005-05-18 20:15 | User Profile
I watched the entire "long version" (47 min) and loved it! Galloway may be a leftist but he has more balls than a bowling alley. He was not the slightest bit cowed or intimidated by the "israeli lobby" and he gave better than he got. Damn shame we don't have anybody like that in [I][B]our[/B][/I] government!
2005-05-18 22:01 | User Profile
What would it take to get someone with Mr. Galloway's cajones into the U.S. Senate?
Well, a good-sized meteor landing on D.C. to start with. God, do you think you could spare about a hundred-footer on those coordinates?
2005-05-19 14:19 | User Profile
townhall.com
Galloway's comic relief
May 19, 2005
WASHINGTON, D.C. -- Things are getting very grim here in Washington. The Democrats are fighting a desperate rear-guard action against the Republicans on several fronts. They are fighting to maintain their death grip on federal judicial appointments. They are resisting Social Security reform. They are using every expedient to scandalize the president's designated UN ambassador, John Bolton. This is not a constructive use of power, for the Democrats have no constructive proposals to advance. It is merely a grim assertion of "no" to the political party now controlling the White House and Capitol Hill.
That is why I, as a professional observer of Washington politics, want to thank the Hon. George Galloway, the offbeat member of Parliament, for traveling all the way to Washington from London to provide us with a comic interlude. He has been accused by Senate investigators of profiting from Saddam Hussein's manipulation of the UN oil-for-food scam. Blustering and shaking in what sounded to me like a Scottish accent -- though it could have been the consequence of strong drink -- the Hon. Galloway informed the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations that the charge is "utterly preposterous." "I am not now, nor have I ever been, an oil trader, and neither has anyone on my behalf," he solemnized.
This line, of course, is an adaptation of the line once used by American Communists and fellow travelers while appearing before congressional investigations of Communist subversion during the 1930s, 1940s and early 1950s. Galloway is a ritualistic leftist. He is so left-wing that he was given the heave-ho by his own Labour Party. Somehow he thought it clever to portray himself in the role once made famous by American leftists testifying before Congress. After his appearance, a tumescent Galloway went before the cameras to boast of how his British parliamentary style had bested our more "sedate" congressional proceedings.
Galloway seems unaware that modern America does not feel much sympathy for left-wing subversives. Moreover, with the publication of documents from the intelligence archives of the Soviet Union, it is clear that many of those leftists and Communists from the past really were engaged in subversion for Moscow. The "Red Scare" was a Red Reality. As to how effective this master of British parliamentarian style was before the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, consider this. After Galloway proclaimed his innocence and denounced President George W. Bush's Iraqi war as the result of a "pack of lies," Republicans and Democrats came to amiable agreement for the first time in months. As the ranking Democrat on the committee, Sen. Carl Levin, put it, Galloway's performance was "not credible." Levin, like Galloway, opposes the war.
The reason Galloway is not credible is that Levin's committee has documents, mounds of documents, linking European officials to profits from the oil-for-food scam that now appears to be the largest case of political graft in history. Saddam used it to arm himself, buy political allies around the world and fund terrorists. Galloway admits that he met repeatedly with Saddam's Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz and even with Saddam, twice -- as frequently as did Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, Galloway admits puckishly and pointlessly. Galloway does not deny the import of documents showing him working with a Jordanian businessman, Fawaz Zureikat, in various deals in Baghdad. He simply denies that he received money from the 20 million barrels of oil documents say he and Zureikat got.
Galloway's buffoonery aside, the evidence now being displayed by our government explains why so many European politicians were so patient with Saddam's numerous breaches of UN resolutions. There was money in it for them personally. Up until the revelations of the oil-for-food scam, I had thought that the Europeans' refusal to attack Saddam was simply another example of European cowardice. There was in the months before the invasion of Iraq no great debate over weapons of mass destruction. There was only the Europeans' feigned claim that we had not exhausted every diplomatic approach to Saddam. He ignored UN resolutions. He rejected international inspections. He acted willfully and with impunity. Yet at the UN, officials refused to take action. Now we know why: There and in many foreign capitals officials were on the take.
é2005 Creators Syndicate, Inc. [url]http://www.townhall.com/columnists/emmetttyrrell/et20050519.shtml[/url]
2005-05-19 14:48 | User Profile
Boozy Bob Tyrell's Mencken-wannabe schtick grew stale a decade ago...Scaife needs to buy a better class of shill.
Galloway's great! Pissing off the FReaker/Dittohead vermin is always a sign of statesmanship.
2005-05-19 15:16 | User Profile
Howard,
I made it a point to watch Fox's Special Report last night to see how they would spin it. Brit didn't report it nor did Fred and the [I]Fox New All Stars[/I] (of David) see fit to discuss it. I think they knew that Coleman had his head handed to him.
2005-05-19 15:27 | User Profile
[QUOTE=Sertorius]Howard,
I made it a point to watch Fox's Special Report last night to see how they would spin it. Brit didn't report it nor did Fred and the [I]Fox New All Stars[/I] (of David) see fit to discuss it. I think they knew that Coleman had his head handed to him.[/QUOTE]
The neo-cons think they can simply bray at 150 decibels and change the facts. The much-demonized "Liberal Media" has proven far more reliable on this story than Rove's goons. :taz:
2005-05-19 16:35 | User Profile
If the US change the rules about foreigners being able to become president of the US (like Arnold) then I say let's bring Galloway and make him the first foreign president of the US.
Galloway really put those people of congress in their places, good for him.
2005-05-20 00:19 | User Profile
[QUOTE=Sertorius]Howard,
I made it a point to watch Fox's Special Report last night to see how they would spin it. Brit didn't report it nor did Fred and the Fox New All Stars (of David) see fit to discuss it. I think they knew that Coleman had his head handed to him.[/QUOTE] Watching Fox for news is like watching a washing machine for a football game. :beer:
2005-05-20 00:21 | User Profile
[QUOTE=Ponce]If the US change the rules about foreigners being able to become president of the US (like Arnold) then I say let's bring Galloway and make him the first foreign president of the US.
Galloway really put those people of congress in their places, good for him.[/QUOTE] A screaming lib as US President? Hmmmmm. What he is, IMO, is a product of the Brit political system. Unless you can hold your own in the battle of oratory, your arse is dogmeat.
Our system rewards soundbytes, the Brit system rewards the ability to speak on coherent paragraphs . . . also spun.
See Blair's rhetoric with Parliament right before and after the War. CSPAN had it every night, way better theater than the lame coverage of Congress.
BS of a higher stripe. :clown:
2005-05-20 00:22 | User Profile
A.E., [QUOTE=Angeleyes]Watching Fox for news is like watching a washing machine for a football game. :beer:[/QUOTE]
LOL!
or perhaps like getting a root canal.
2005-05-20 08:30 | User Profile
[QUOTE=Angeleyes]A screaming lib as US President? Hmmmmm. What he is, IMO, is a product of the Brit political system. Unless you can hold your own in the battle of oratory, your arse is dogmeat.
Our system rewards soundbytes, the Brit system rewards the ability to speak on coherent paragraphs . . . also spun.
See Blair's rhetoric with Parliament right before and after the War. CSPAN had it every night, way better theater than the lame coverage of Congress.
BS of a higher stripe. :clown:[/QUOTE]
Agreed. Listening to the jew-whores in Congress mouth-fart is enough to make anyone go Schaivo: "With all due respect to the gentlelady from...." Ugh.
The only entertaining rhetorician of the Old School in the whole mob o' traitors is Robert Byrd. He wouldn't be a bit out of place in the House of Commons, or on the hustings in 19th century America.
You want a vision of the post-Byrd Congressional future? Imagine Jewmers in your face forever. Or at least until they're lampposted.
2005-05-20 22:01 | User Profile
New York Post
PUNY POLS COWER BEFORE A PRO-TERROR BULLY
By ANDREA PEYSER
Columnist Of The Year
SOMEBODY, please inject our senators with a heavy dose of testosterone.
Maybe then they'll be able to deal with thugs and bullies like George Galloway.
Across the Atlantic, Galloway is sometimes referred to as a member of the British Parliament. But others call this lefty lackey for butchers "the MP for Baghdad Central."
So it was yesterday that the arrogant, Saddam-loving bully stood before Congress. Speaking with an accent that was equal parts Mike Myers and Baghdad Bob, he administered a sound public thrashing of all things American.
He insulted our administration. He decried the war against terror.
And Galloway steadfastly refused to answer directly a single question about the ways he might have profited from terror.
It gets worse.
As he hijacked Congress to unleash his outrageous, insulting tirade, our senators did not pipe up.
Rather, they assumed the look of frightened little boys caught with pants around their ankles, nervously awaiting punishment.
Galloway's love of greedy and bloodthirsty tyrants dates back to his days as a local official in Scotland. He flew the flag of Yasser Arafat's Palestine over his hometown of Dundee.
A decade ago, he told the murderous Saddam Hussein, "Sir, I salute your courage, your strength and your indefatigability."
His loyalty was richly repaid, according to a Senate investigation of the oil-for-food program ââ¬â which acted like the United Nations' piggybank for bribery.
Galloway was said to be rewarded by Saddam under that program with millions of barrels of oil he bought at sweetheart rates. And then, says the Senate, he laundered the profits through his charity, Mariam Appeal ââ¬â which raised money to help a 4-year-old Iraqi girl fight leukemia.
It was strange that the Senate committee members seemed taken aback when Gal- loway launched his blistering attack against the war that toppled his main man.
Staring at committee chairman Norm Coleman (R-Minn.), 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 people have paid with their lives ââ¬â 1,600 of them American soldiers."
He weaved, dodged and went on the offensive whenever his role in the oil-for-food scandal was raised.
It's time to take the gloves off, senators.
Kick this viper where it hurts.
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