Rare is the time when an American can listen to a politician and think to himself: “damn straight.” Tuesday was such a day. It’s too bad the politician in question had to come from across the pond. In testimony before the US Senate Subcommittee on Investigations, English MP George Galloway gave eloquent testimony criticizing America’s lax system of justice, its foreign affairs, and the grandstanding of its politicians.
He had been invited to speak to defend himself against allegations that he had profited from kickbacks from the Iraqi Oil-for-Food program, run while Saddam Hussein still ran the country. In addition to refuting the criminal allegations, Mr Galloway took umbrage with his name being publicly smeared, American hypocrisy regarding policy toward Iraq, and the gall of US Senator Norm Coleman to convict him without even offering him a chance to defend himself.
After blasting Mr Coleman for his hypocrisy on Iraq and refuting the main charges, Mr Galloway began his conclusion with an oratorical gem:
“Senator, in everything I said about Iraq, I turned out to be right and you turned out to be wrong and 100,000 people paid with their lives; 1600 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. If the world had listened to Kofi Annan, whose dismissal you demanded, if the world had listened to President Chirac who you want to paint as some kind of corrupt traitor, if the world had listened to me and the anti-war movement in Britain, we would not be in the disaster that we are in today. Senator, this is the mother of all smokescreens.”
Amen, Mr Galloway.
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