Did Galloway Trade Oil For Saddam?
George Galloway, ex-Labour and currently Trotskyist RESPECT member of the House of Commons in Britain, stands accused of secretly channeling oil from the prewar Iraqi oil-for-food program, says the Edinburgh Evening News. The charges were made by a U.S. Senate committee that fingered Galloway and a former French cabinet minister as having received millions of “allocations” to sell barrels of Iraqi oil worth 30 cents apiece.
Galloway angrily denied the charges, calling Senator Norm Coleman and others on the committee “lickspittles” of President George W. Bush. Galloway last year won significant damages from a British newspaper for similar charges.
I’ve met Galloway; I was part of a panel debating the U.S. election with him (and a former Chancellor of the Exchequer) back in October. He is equal parts jerk, rhetorician, dime-store socialist ideologue and snake charmer. His message of anti-Americanism, choosing as his target of opportunity President Bush, won a disturbing amount of applause from the students who had gathered to debate the issue. In front of an audience, he threatened to sue a young man who had challenged him to discuss the allegations of his support for the Iraqi regime. (And of this support, at least in a moral sense, there can be little doubt.)
Galloway may, in fact, be innocent of these specific charges. I won’t say; I don’t want ITA to get sued. (And that’s not an idle fear.) But Galloway is a bully and a throwback. He’s a pretty awful parliamentarian too, to judge from Wikipedia’s assessment of his record:
According to theyworkforyou.com, as of May 6th, 2005, George Galloway had:
- spoken in 0 debates in the last year–tied for last, out of 659 MPs.
- Asked 0 written questions in the last year–in a large multi-way tie for last, out of 659 MPs.
- attended 3% of votes in parliament–649th out of 657 MPs.
So it’s hard for me to muster any sympathy for him.
5 Responses to “Did Galloway Trade Oil For Saddam?”
“His message of anti-Americanism, choosing as his target of opportunity President Bush, won a disturbing amount of applause from the students who had gathered to debate the issue.”
I don’t know anything about Galloway, but maybe we should ask ourselves why anti-Bush and anti-American rhetoric has so much resonance in Europe. As I recall, pro-American sentiment ran pretty strong after 9/11. Maybe, just maybe, the reversal in sentiment toward Americans is our fault, not theirs.
Agree. The reversal in sentiment in Europe was caused because we were going to actually try and solve the problem after September 11, instead of lobbing a few ineffective missles and going back to the status quo ante. It is easy to be sympathetic to your competition when they are humbled at no expense to you. The sympathy ends once the competition resumes. This is news to some, however.
Ask an American on the street whether we are competing with Europe, and they’ll look at you like you are daft. Ask a European on the street whether they are competing with America, and they will agree, and, if truthful, comment on how poorly Europe is doing.
It is hard for Europeans to reconcile their centuries of setting the ground rules for international diplomacy ended several decades ago.
The really scary thing is that he participated in 3% of parliamentary votes and there are 8 MPs with worse records.
That puts him a step above Nancy Pelosi.
I wish our American Trotskyist, jerk, rhetorician, dime-store socialist ideologue and snake charmers, were so self aware as to know what George Galloway appears to know; that he has no business being a law maker, and that his input would only be detrimental to society.
Good on ya for that, George Galloway, you two bit con artist you.
“The really scary thing is that he participated in 3% of parliamentary votes and there are 8 MPs with worse records.”
Ahem. There were several Sinn Fein MPs elected to Westminster in the last parliament (and one more elected for the coming Parliament) who refuse to take their seats.