Galloway Embarrasses US Senate Accusers

George Galloway turned up at the US Senate yesterday to defend his name in the Iraqi oil-for-food scandal. He said he would give his accusers “both barrels.” He did better than that. He showed up the Washington game of personal destruction by innuendo and fabrications to be hollow, deceitful and un-American. Shame on America that it took a foreign politician to remind the Congress of the right to a fair hearing.

Mr. Galloway, the Scot who holds the Bethnal Green and Bow seat in the British House of Commons for the Respect Coalition, had been accused of profiting from the oil-for-food program. Senators claimed he had dome so by way of oil allocations, which were legal under the system, that allowed the holder to re-sell Iraqi oil on the open market for a mark up of around 25%. The argument goes that he supported the Saddamite regime in Iraq and was “paid” through this system to help bring down the sanctions against Iraq.

“I am not now, nor have I ever been . . .” Mr. Galloway began his defense. In the 1950s, at a similarly paranoid and disgraceful period in Washington, that sentence would end with “a member of the Communist Party.” Instead, Mr. Galloway finished, “an oil trader, and neither has anyone on my behalf.” The American press seems blissfully ignorant of the McCarthy-ite jibe and Mr. Galloway’s allusion to the kangaroo court quality of the accusations. He was, after all, only invited to appear after the US Senate's Government Affairs Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations issued a report condemning him as a profiteer.

Mr. Galloway is an unreconstructed “Old Labour” socialist, as well as a veteran of the House of Commons. In the former role, he doesn’t defer to authority – indeed, there is something inherently suspect about authority from his perspective. And in the latter role, he is, like all MPs, vastly superior to American politicians in thinking on his feet – it is a trait the British system selects, whereas the American system opted for local celebrity fundraisers. In a nutshell, Mr. Galloway merely demanded the evidence of his guilt – and since there was none presented, he added,

If you had any evidence 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 because I agreed with your Mr. Greenblatt [Mark Greenblatt, legal counsel on the committee]. Your Mr. Greenblatt was absolutely correct. What counts is not the names on the paper, what counts is where's the money. Senator? Who paid me hundreds of thousands of dollars of money? The answer to that is nobody. And if you had anybody who ever paid me a penny, you would have produced them today.