"Smoking gun" regarding Galloway accusations

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http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/4373764.stm

If the evidence is as solid as is claimed - and somehow, I've yet to be entirely confident it is - then 'indefatigable' George is in for a rough time. Supposedly, the committee has evidence of:

• Galloway personally solicited and was granted eight oil allocations totaling 23 million barrels from the Hussein government from 1999 through 2003;

• Galloway’s wife, Dr. Amineh Abu-Zayyad, received approximately $150,000 in connection with one allocation of oil;

• Galloway’s political campaign, the Mariam Appeal, received at least $446,000 in connection with several allocations granted under the Oil-for-Food Program;

• Illegal “surcharge” payments in excess of $1.6 million were paid to the Hussein regime in connection with the oil allocations granted to Galloway and the Mariam Appeal; and

• Galloway knowingly made false or misleading statements under oath before the Subcommittee at its hearing on May 17, 2005.

It'll be interesting to see him attempt to rebut this now.

 

This says it all:

"Isn't it ironic that on the one hand we are told that the likes of Tariq Aziz and Saddam Hussein are homicidal maniacs, and on the other they are the most trustworthy people in the world when it comes to providing testimony against George Galloway?"

Roy McKay
Galloway's spokesman

 

They're not relying on Aziz or Saddam; they're relying on, among other things, extensive banking records and a wide range of interviews of various figures at all levels, both outside the former regime and within it.

I'm sure George would like to believe there was an American-lead conspiracy to wreck him based on lies and distortions, but unfortunately, that doesn't match the reality of the hard evidence increasingly building up against him.

Of course, he'll always have the support of hard-left die-hards who care only for using every opportunity to attack America, and don't care a jot for the facts or the truth. But all reasonable people have long since parted company both with them and with George.

 

He seems to look forward to the challenge.

May I ask what you base you last paragraph on?

 

Edit: Comment removed due to me becoming senile and misreading the paragraph in question (George = Bush instead of Galloway). Although I do think that assuming all people on one side of an argument are unreasonable is a bit of a stretch.

I tend to find both sides of the political debate degenerate into the 'rabid dog' fights around here in equal measure.

[ October 25, 2005, 20:09: Message edited by: T2Bruno ]

 

I don't see the world all anywhere here, can you?

 

Edit: My mistake -- I made the stupid assumption that George = Bush, not Galloway. Senility must be sinking in.

 

The simple fact that there are always people, no matter whatever the prevailing circumstances, will dislike, or even hate the west; equally as there are people who will always support whatever the west does just as blindly. For example, in the 1980's, the toppling of Saddam was a cause celebre amongst the British radical left and with George Galloway - the same sorts of people who now form the leadership of Respect and the Stop the War Campaign - and the west was attacked for it's stance on Iraq. After the first Gulf War, they almost entirely reversed this, and it lead to Galloway travelling to Baghdad to, grotesquely, salute Saddam for his "indefatigability", among other things.

Many of these people who have formed around Galloway and the groups mentioned above form a rag-tag of Trotskyites, former CPGB types, and the like. To suggest that they will approach the issues impartially and level-headedly is somewhat naive; They have a mono-obsession with the evil of the west, and they are entirely willing to be intellectually convienient in pursuit of that.

So pointing out that George Galloway attracts morally ambiguous people from the British left - and that he himself is to be included in such a group - means that I support the Bush administration? This is a bizzare line of reasoning, to say the least. Note, I did not say that all of the people who supported Galloway or even believed he was still likely to be innocent were in the description I gave; I would suggest from this that you are reading something into my words which does not exist.

I would advise you not to jump to such unfounded and foolish assumptions in future, as it does not generally benefit the idea of you as being someone who is aproaching the facts impartially.

[ October 26, 2005, 16:04: Message edited by: Dranalis DeAealth ]

 

This is precisely what you said, and which you continue to imply in your above post. My original statement was aimed at rather specifically a British audience, or at least, an audience who was familiar with British politics. Most people - even some people who would be willing to give George Galloway some slack - would probably conceed the point which I made above. It is not essentially a terribly controversial point.

You, however, jumped from that to strongly suggesting - albeit, admitedly, not stating directly - that I was a Bush administration supporter, and that, for some reason, my entire argument was invalid because of a single paragraph which you had an objection to. If this wasn't what you were suggesting, then what precisely was the context of your first post in this thread?

It would be reasonable to conclude from this that you are operating with a bias and a certain streak of irrationality in your approach to this subject - not I.

The statement that reasonable people will have parted company with George Galloway is not itself unreasonable. Note, I say parted company. I did not say those who defend him on some points on here or those who think he may be innocent of the charges levelled against him by Senator Coleman. I was refering to Galloway's political cohorts.

Perhaps I should inform you of precisely what Galloway said to Saddam, personally, at the aforementioned meeting in Baghdad?

George rather convieniently, of course, says now that he meant something entirely different from what he actually said. In fact, he wishes us to believe that the entire speech he gave, which this statement was part of, (Which includes the exhortation "until victory, until victory, until Jerusalem") was intended to be something which it patently is not. But that is beside the point. It may also be useful to point out that Galloway had a strong friendship with Tariq Aziz, which went so far as to include spending Christmas with him in 1999.

Now, if you want to make a case that reasonable people will still consort politically with individuals who say these kind of things to a mass murderer, and have had these kinds of connections then please, go ahead. I am, like Mr Galloway, eager to debate. But I would suggest that saying that reasonable people have long since parted company with George Galloway is no more an insult than it would be to say that reasonable people have long since parted company with Louis Farrakhan or Lyndon LaRouche; indeed, it is simply a statement of fact.

If you wanted proof of my views on Iraq, then you could have gone no further than the thread on the Iraqi consititution. But you chose not to do so, and instead launched into an astonishing, unfounded, and innacurate criticsm of my 'views', which you in fact knew nothing about. This is bad debating.

I believe that I have behaved well, and in an orderly fashion in this thread. I have no intentions of starting a flame war; I shall leave those kinds of base tactics to others. I believe I have presented my argument rationally, and if anyone wishes to dispute what I said, then they are perfectly free to do so.

[ October 26, 2005, 14:19: Message edited by: Dranalis DeAealth ]

 

Dranalis is not questioning Galloway's opposition to the war (a position he himself shares) but rather his blatent hypocracy. Galloway was once a genuine critic of Saddam's. In the mid-1980s Hansard records him delivering a ferocious assault on the Ba'ath regime, and those in the West who traded with and encouraged it. By 1994, however, he was in Baghdad famously saluting Saddam's courage and indefatigability.

Dranalis is infact refering to those on the British radical-left who are guilty of the 'sin of the committed', the belief that my enemy's enemy is my friend. Or, in the context of the modern world, any anti-American will do. When Iraq stopped being a friend of the West it became a friend of George's. To attack George Galloway is not to attack the Left or the anti-war movement. Indeed, many of his most vocal opponents have been drawn from the aforementioned camps. The Guardian's Andrew Roth once described Galloway as one who suffers from -

It would seem that Tal mistook Dranalis' comments for the, wholly unfounded, “liberal media-bias” warcry that is so popular with the American right and conservative publications in Britain like the Daily Telegraph. Even if it is true that Galloway took money from Saddam Hussein, what sane man could possibly accept Telegraph editor Charles Moore's editorial conclusions that he is thereby guilty of treason and that his actions have discredited the entire anti-war movement?

Though I am not acquainted with 'Gorgeous George', I feel I am on reasonably safe ground when I say that he is not a man best known for his saintly integrity. But the reason one is reluctant to accept at their face value the latest charges against him is that they have been made by a man (Senator Coleman) who is obviously pursuing a personal vendetta against Galloway; something evident by the relish with which he read the charges on Tuesday's edition of Newsnight. Whatever my doubts and misgivings, I cannot conceal my delight in the way George had previously flown to Washington and berated a group of smug-looking senators sitting in judgment on him.

Especially as the charges are leveled by a justice system in which 'terrorist suspects' can be picked up in secret and interrogated without restraint. Their defence counsels appointed by the Pentagon; who can refuse to keep confidential instructions confidential. Their prosecutors, also appointed by the Pentagon, can keep evidence from them even if it proves their innocence. Their judges at the military tribunals, who once again are Pentagon appointees, can change the rules of the court at any time, order that their trials be held in secret and refuse to compel the attendance of witnesses who might clear their names. At the end of the hearing, they can be executed if found guilty. I think Senator Coleman should remember this before turning on his tap of pious hypocrisy.

[ October 26, 2005, 17:15: Message edited by: SatansBedFellow ]

 

Ah, I was coming back this way to update my previous Galloway thread when I found this one. Good to see.

If the Senate really does have the banking records that it claims, then why is it only referring Galloway for making false statements? Should there not also be charges for the actual fact of profiting from Oil for Food? I suppose it could be a jurisdictional issue, but I'm skeptical.

 

[snip]

[I don't like to entertain people who think that arrogance combined with sheer persistence is somehow going to excuse them from complying with our rules. I've spelled it all out in my last post. If you choose to continue the argument in public, against our rules, your posts will be deleted. And if you keep it up, you'll be banned. It's pretty simple. So please stop wasting my time. Since you obviously still haven't read any of our rules, I suggest you do so before your next post if you intend to stay around here. -Tal]

[ October 27, 2005, 14:56: Message edited by: Taluntain ]