Galloway is off to Washington

[Szass-Tam]

Did anyone just watch the "trial" (not quite sure else what to call it) on TV.
Boy did he give those senators a going over.

[Albromor]

The Senators haven't even begun...

[shamrock_uk]

Thanks for the clarification Barry, it's more to do with my lack of clear knowledge about the left that I lumped him there.

I'm actually finding Marxian economics strangely compelling, having to try and reconcile my fundamental belief in the ability of free markets to get things done with my growing unease at the international economic system and how its weighted.

Anyway, it looks like the American media have taken notice of Galloway. And apparently he did sit through 1 1/2 hours of testimony against him, so presumably the Senators have begun?

Media react to blistering hearing George Galloway's explosive testimony before United States senators has surprised even seasoned American observers of Capitol Hill. CNN's Wolf Blitzer described the British MP's evidence as "a blistering attack on US senators rarely heard" in the seat of American power. "Members of Congress are clearly not used to what goes on in the British parliament," he suggested in an interview with Mr Galloway. The New York Times website also noted that "the vitriolic tone used by Mr Galloway was rare for a witness in a Senate hearing". It described his appearance as "unusual". "George Galloway seemed to catch the panel off guard with his intensely delivered denials... " the NYT said. Before his testimony in front of senators, Mr Galloway's name was hardly on the lips of the US media, still less the US public. But the NYT said the British MP had enlivened the dry issue of abuses of the UN Oil-for-Food programme. "The unapologetic Mr Galloway put a dramatic face on a scandal that has been largely bogged down in the arcane details of diverted oil shipments, translated documents, shadowy go-betweens and questionable payments," it said. 'Quite a show' In 2003, the Christian Science Monitor issued a public apology to Mr Galloway over a story alleging that he accepted millions of pounds from Saddam Hussein, which turned out to be based on faked documents. It headlined Mr Galloway's latest testimony: "Galloway lashes out at senators". "Galloway's appearance was an odd spectacle on Capitol Hill," the CSM's website said. "A legislator from a friendly nation, voluntarily testifying under oath, without immunity, at a combative congressional hearing where neither side showed much pretense of diplomatic niceties." Meanwhile, the right-wing Fox News channel described the British parliamentarian as an "arch-leftie British MP". Fox political commentator Eric Shawn said Mr Galloway had "put on quite a show". The "firebrand British MP defiantly lashed out" in a series of "heated" exchanges, Mr Shawn said. Story from BBC NEWS: http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/1/h...cs/4557369.stm Published: 2005/05/17 22:44:03 GMT © BBC MMV

[Timber Loftis]

YOU GO GUY!!! [img]graemlins/thumbsup.gif[/img]

Here's CNN's report on it -- from www.cnn.com

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- British Member of Parliament George Galloway angrily denied Tuesday that he profited from Saddam Hussein's regime and criticized a Senate panel probing alleged corruption in the U.N. oil-for-food program in Iraq.

Galloway, an outspoken critic of the war in Iraq, called the panel's investigation the "mother of all smokescreens" used to divert attention from the "pack of lies" that led to the 2003 invasion.

"I told the world that Iraq, contrary to your claims, did not have weapons of mass destruction. I told the world, contrary to your claims, that Iraq had no connection to al Qaeda. I told the world, contrary to your claims, that Iraq had no connection to the atrocity on 9/11, 2001," he told the panel's Republican chairman, Sen. Norm Coleman of Minnesota.

"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, 15,000 of them wounded, many of them disabled forever, on a pack of lies."

He added, "Senator, this is the mother of all smokescreens. You are trying to divert attention from the crimes that you supported."

Galloway's appearance Tuesday before the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations of the Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee was the first by an official allegedly involved in the scandal.

In a report last week, the subcommittee stated that deposed Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein granted Galloway vouchers for 20 million barrels of oil between 2000 and 2003.

He strongly disputed that allegation Tuesday.

"I am not now or ever been an oil trader and neither has anyone on my behalf. I have never seen a barrel of oil, owned one, bought one, sold one, and neither has anybody on my behalf," Galloway testified.

He also said he did not own a company that trades in oil.

"If you had any evidence of that I had ever engaged in any actual oil transaction, if you had any evidence that anybody ever gave me any money, it would be before the public and before this" committee today, Galloway said.

Coleman, a former district attorney, told Galloway before his sworn testimony that "senior Iraqi officials have confirmed that you, in fact, received oil allocations and that the documents that identify you as an allocation recipient are valid."

Galloway challenged that accusation in his opening statement.

"Now, I know that standards have slipped over the last few years in Washington, but for a lawyer, you're remarkably cavalier with any idea of justice," he told Coleman.

Galloway, 51, is a leading critic of British Prime Minister Tony Blair and his alliance with President Bush in the war in Iraq. He was re-elected on an antiwar platform earlier this month.

He said he was "friendly" with former Iraqi Foreign Minister Tariq Aziz and met him many times but that he met with Saddam only twice in his career -- in 1994 and in 2002 -- the last time to persuade Saddam to allow U.N. weapons inspectors into the country.

He said he had met with Saddam "exactly as many times as Donald Rumsfeld has met with him."

"The difference is Donald Rumsfeld met him to sell him guns and give him maps," Galloway said in a heated opening statement.

"I met him to try and bring about an end to sanctions, suffering and war, and on the second occasion, I met him to try and persuade him to allow Hans Blix and U.N. inspectors back into country,"

Rumsfeld visited Baghdad to meet Saddam as President Reagan's Middle East envoy in the 1980s, when the U.S. sided with Iraq in its war with Iran. Blix was chief U.N. weapons inspector in Iraq before the war.

Galloway complained that the panel had determined his guilt without speaking to him.

"You have my name on lists provided to you... by the convicted bank robber and fraudster and con man Ahmed Chalabi, who many people, to their credit, in your country now realize played a decisive role in leading your country into the disaster in Iraq," Galloway told the Senate panel.

Other allegations reportedly came from Iraqi detainees.

"In these circumstances, knowing what the world knows about how you treat prisoners in Abu Ghraib prison, in Bagram Air Base [Afghanistan], in Guantanamo Bay -- including, if I may say, British citizens being held in those places -- I'm not sure how much credibility anyone would put on anything you manage to get from a prisoner in those circumstances," he said.

The Senate subcommittee has alleged in recent days that a number of European politicians were rewarded by Saddam for supporting Iraq's bid to lift economic sanctions imposed after Iraq invaded Kuwait in 1990.

The subcommittee report, relying on Iraqi Oil Ministry documents and interviews with detained Saddam loyalists, alleged that Galloway received allocations for 20 million barrels from June 2000 to June 2003 and arranged for two companies, Aredio Petroleum-France and Middle East Advanced Semiconductor Inc., to take delivery of the crude.

Galloway said he never heard of Aredio, but confirmed that the president of Middle East ASI, Jordanian businessman named Fawaz Zureikat, was a good friend and the second-biggest benefactor of a British charity he started called Mariam's Appeal.

Zureikat donated about $600,000. A British probe of the charity "found no impropriety" in fund-raising, Galloway said.

"He may have signed an oil contract. It had nothing to do with me," Galloway said. "I was aware he was doing extensive business with Iraq. I did not know the details of it. It was not my business."

Europeans implicated
In addition to Galloway, the panel also implicated former French Interior Minister Charles Pasqua, who allegedly was allocated 11 million barrels.

"I wrote to Mr. Coleman," Pasqua said Sunday, "and I told him that all allegations about myself are false."

Russian Deputy Parliament Speaker Vladimir Zhirinovsky, who was accused Monday of receiving 76 million barrels of Iraqi crude oil, denied the accusation.

"I've never signed any contract and never received a cent from Iraq," Zhirinovsky told a Russian TV interviewer.

Oil ended up in U.S.
The panels seem to agree that three-quarters of the oil Iraq was permitted to export under oil-for-food ended up in the United States, though U.S. firms directly purchased less than 1 percent of the crude.

A new report from Democrats on the Senate subcommittee concludes the United States ended up with a majority of the oil lifted from Iraq after vendors paid illicit surcharges of 10 cents to 30 cents a barrel to Saddam.

Investigators have estimated Saddam pocketed at least $2 billion by extorting the surcharges and kickbacks on humanitarian goods purchased.

While oil-for-food was operating from 1996 to 2003, Saddam got to choose the buyers of 3.4 billion barrels of oil that sold for $64 billion.

The oil revenue went into a U.N.-controlled bank account that doled out money for U.N.-approved sales of food, medicine and supplies to Iraq.

The illicit surcharges were typically wired into Iraq-controlled bank accounts in Lebanon, Oman and an Iraqi-front company in the United Arab Emirates, or paid in cash to Iraqi embassies and flown to Baghdad.

Of the $228 million in surcharged oil, the Democratic report found the United States imported 525 million barrels, or 52 percent of it.

Among the biggest end users of this oil were Valero, Premcor, Alon USA, and Exxon, according to the report.

CNN's Phil Hirschkorn contributed to this report.

[Davros]

Makes for intersting reading [img]smile.gif[/img] - I look forward to more transcripts from this set of hearings. That bunch of Glaswegian diatribes must have seen the odd repug senator with dropped jaw and a pronounced seat squirm.

[Timber Loftis]

Does anyone have a link to the actual transcripts?

[shamrock_uk]

Sorry, no. Presumably the Senate publishes these things though? I've checked the Committee's website and no sign of anything yet.

If you want to watch it, then you'll find it here. That video link will take you to a highlights video, but you should see an option beneath it to watch it in full (about 45 mins).

[ 05-19-2005, 06:06 PM: Message edited by: shamrock_uk ]

[Morgeruat]

GEORGE Galloway yesterday failed in his attempt to convince a sceptical US Senate investigative committee that he had not profited from oil dealings with Iraq under the UN’s controversial oil-for-food programme. Despite a typically barnstorming performance full of bluster and rhetorical flourishes, the former Glasgow Kelvin MP was pinned down by persistent questioning over his business relationship with Fawaz Zureikat, the chairman of the Mariam Appeal - set up to assist a four-year-old Iraqi girl suffering from leukaemia. And it was a Democrat senator, Carl Levin, rather than the Republican committee chairman, Norm Coleman, who gave him the hardest time as Mr Galloway sought to turn the tables on his inquisitors, leaving him no closer to clearing his name than when he took his seat in front of the sub-committee of the Senate’s homeland security and government affairs committee in Washington. Time and again, Mr Levin questioned him, requesting wearily that he deliver a straight answer to a straight question. But Mr Galloway could, or would not. The Respect MP clearly thought he came out on top, and said so bluntly afterwards, describing the chairman as "not much of a lyncher". But Mr Coleman, accused by the MP of being "remarkably cavalier with any idea of justice", appeared unswayed by Mr Galloway’s testimony. Asked whether Mr Galloway violated his oath to tell the truth before the committee, Mr Coleman said: "I don’t know. We’ll have to look over the record. I just don’t think he was a credible witness." The committee’s report on Mr Galloway’s alleged involvement, published to coincide with yesterday’s hearing, pulled few punches. Despite the MP’s denials, it said, the evidence showed that: "Iraq granted George Galloway allocations for millions of barrels of oil under the oil-for-food programme. "Moreover, some evidence indicates that Galloway appeared to use a charity for children’s leukaemia to conceal payments associated with at least one such allocation. Lastly, according to senior Saddam officials, the oil allocations were granted by Iraq because of Galloway’s support for the Saddam regime and his opposition to UN sanctions." Mr Galloway, the MP for Bethnal Green and Bow, had pledged to take the fight to the committee and did not disappoint. Sitting up straight, he stared ahead as he delivered an impassioned diatribe against the US approach to Iraq. "I am not now, nor have I ever been an oil trader and neither has anyone on my behalf," he told the chairman. "I was an opponent of Saddam Hussein when British and American governments and businessmen were selling him guns and gas." In a lengthy opening statement, Mr Galloway insisted the sub-committee had no evidence against him. "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." And Mr Galloway rejected a claim in the sub-committee’s report that he had had "many" meetings with Saddam Hussein, saying he had only met the former dictator twice. "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," he said. It was the speech of a man believing himself wronged: "I gave my heart and soul to stop you from committing the disaster that you did commit in invading Iraq," he said. "And I told the world that the case for war was a pack of lies." And he poured scorn on the documentation produced in evidence against him, insisting, on his oath, that he had never heard of the company which, it was suggested, acted as a conduit for oil deals on his behalf. He accused the sub-committee of committing a "schoolboy howler" in its presentation of the evidence. Under repeated questioning, Mr Galloway conceded that Mr Zureikat did have extensive business dealings with the Saddam regime but, challenged over whether his friend’s generous contributions to the Mariam Appeal - £900,000 by his own previous assessments - could have come from the sale of oil, he stonewalled. Urged to say if he would repay the cash if it could be proved to have come from such a source, he again ducked the question. Mr Galloway first met Mr Zureikat, a Jordanian businessman, through his now-estranged wife Amineh Abu-Zayyad, who had attended the same university in Jordan. The men became friends and set up the Mariam Appeal in 1998.

[shamrock_uk]

Yeah, he was more evasive in the last ten minutes or so having watched it now.

However, I wouldn't say Levin had him on the ropes or anything, he basically kept asking the same question which was whether he would have been "troubled" if Mr. Zureikat had broken the sanctions.

I got the feeling it was slightly beside the point - they could have asked more awkward questions IMO.

[ 05-24-2005, 10:31 AM: Message edited by: shamrock_uk ]

[Morgeruat]

*shrugs* typical politcs as usual unfortunately, both sides claim victory, the viewers at home believe the source they want to believe the most in, and little else happens. Being evasive prevents you from being brought up on perjury charges, since you never really say anything, look at Clinton...

Huzzah for political disillusionment.