“S-Class” Galloway and the U.S. Congress

I may have been called out of his speech by a temper tantrum (my son’s), but S-Class George Galloway keeps making the news.

Power Line is reporting that Minnesota Senator Norm Coleman has announced (press release here) that the Congressional investigation into Galloway’s claims that he never received payment from Saddam Hussein in the form of oil allocations are false.As reprinted in the U. K. Independent:

In a report issued here, Minnesota Senator Norm Coleman and his colleagues on the Senate Subcommittee for Investigations claim to have evidence showing that Mr Galloway’s political organization and his wife received vouchers worth almost $600,000 (£338,000) from the then Iraqi government.

“We have what we call the smoking gun,” said Mr Coleman, who will send the report to the US Department of Justice and the British authorities. The MP could face charges of perjury, making false statements and obstructing a Congressional investigation. Each charge carries a possible jail term of five years and a fine of $250,000.

Mr. Galloway, unsurprisingly, is unmoved:

…Mr Galloway again denied the allegations – as vehemently as he did last May in a bravura performance before the Subcommittee, when he accused Mr Coleman of mounting “the mother of all smokescreens” to divert attention from America’s post-invasion difficulties, and launched a broadside against the Bush administration’s entire policy in Iraq.

“I have not made a penny out of oil deals with Iraq, or indeed any other kind of deal,” the MP said last night. “This ought to be dead, yet Norm Coleman parrots it once more from 3,000 miles away and protected by privilege.” His spokesman later described the report as “derogatory and defamatory”.

I’m making popcorn.

33 thoughts on ““S-Class” Galloway and the U.S. Congress”

  1. I don’t know if Galloway took the money or not but the evidence has been there all along that he may well have. His lionisation by a certain segment of the left here and in the UK is as clear an indication as I have seen that there are some who put hatred of the US and/or hatred of Bush before any consideration of who and what they may be supporting.

  2. Galloway is despicable and a typical left wing-nut, only British.

    Question: Will the UK extradite him if he is charged with a crime, whether directly involved the Oil-for-Food scandal or perjury?

  3. I like the idea of George Galloway being afraid to leave Britain and enter any other country with an extradition treaty with the US. Or even, at the least, being barred from the US for a good while.

  4. _Will the UK extradite him if he is charged with a crime, whether directly involved the Oil-for-Food scandal or perjury?_

    So all the French politicians involved, like Pasqua?

    You’ll need to build more room in your prisons, guys!

  5. Where does it say in the link that Galloway drives an “S-Class” Mercedes? It only says he “drove off in his Mercedes.”

    Are you embellishing or editorializing?

    And let me get this straight: Do you support the spending of US taxpayer money to investigate whether a British member of parliament lied about “taking money” from Saddam?????

    ???

    Gotta love Wingnut World….

  6. Galloway has had his fun accusing the leaders of Iraq of being paid stooges of the US. And accusing Christopher Hitchens of being a paid stooge of the US.

    It’s only cricket that we should have a bit of sport ourselves, there’s a good chap.

  7. Indeed old boy.

    But let’s have a real go at it, shall we?

    Lets get those indictments from Fitzy’s office out so we can begin the real fun.

    Now THAT will be Cricket, wouldn’t you say? And a jolly damn good show it will be as well!!

    I would think it a real Cracking Good Time were not our national security placed in iminent jeopardy by the mischief of the Bushies.

    I say “off with their heads”, the lot of them! Treason, I tell you!

  8. _Do you support the spending of US taxpayer money to investigate whether a British member of parliament lied about “taking money” from Saddam?????_

    “Galloway”:http://www.seixon.com/blog/archives/2005/09/galloway_vs_hit.html does:

    bq. Nobody every discussed oil allocations with me, not Tariq Aziz, not anybody. I’ve already said it under oath, never mind an affidavit, under oath *on pain of imprisonment* in front of the US Senate.

    By the way, does anyone know whether Galloway ever signed Hitchens’ affidavit?

  9. I’m sorry, I missed the more recent statement from “Galloway,”:http://www.thisislondon.com/news/articles/PA_NEWA18602761130194246A00?source=PA%20Feed&ct=5 seeking prosecution:

    bq. “I am demanding prosecution, I am begging for prosecution,” Mr Galloway told Sky News. “I am saying if I have lied under oath in front of the Senate, that’s a criminal offence.

    bq. “Charge me and I will head for the airport right now and face them down in court as I faced them down in the Senate room.

    bq. “Because I publicly humiliated this lick-spittle senator Norman Coleman – one of (President George) Bush’s right-hand men – in the US Senate in May, this sneak revenge attack has been launched over the last 24 hours.”

    I guess there will be no problem with extradition, unless, of course, he is lying.

  10. One has to wonder what legal liability Coleman may have put himself in if for whatever reason he chooses not to fess up with his alleged evidence regardless of the whip count..

  11. I see that Galloway solicited his payoff during a visit to Iraq in November, 1999. This explains the English nursery rhyme:

    Remember, remember
    the Fifth of November
    Petroleum, Treason, and Plot!
    We know of no reason
    Why Petroleum Treason
    Ever should be forgot!

  12. Back on May 24, I seem to recall having this to say “after his Senate testimony:”:http://www.windsofchange.net/archives/006882.php#c2

    bq.. By the way, loved this bit from “The Scotsman’s report:”:http://instapundit.com/archives/023065.php

    “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.”

    Kudos to Sen. Carl Levin (D-MI) for his persistence. Bluster is fun to cover, but its utility will fade before a really determined investigation. Americans may not have the British tradition, but you’d be surprised how many prosecutors end up in politics. Handing a guy like Gollway the rope and waiting for him to hang himself with statements you can disprove later on is a classic tactic, and demands the sort of response we saw. Histrionics time comes later.

    Coleman isn’t the quitting type, and judging by the performance with Galloway Levin seems set for the long haul too. Very promising.

    p. Typical that all the anti-war folks could see was the bluster, of which they heartily approved in both form and substance.

    Meanwhile, the Senators followed through. Now it’s time for some indictments. Then we’ll see how serious Lord Har Har is, and how many speaking engagements in the USA he dares to accept.

    See George Galloway in an American prison for about 15 years would be only marginally less satisfying than the Iraqis’ trial and execution of Saddam Hussein.

  13. Thanks, Glen, for the idea for an effigy for this year’s bonfire night. Now if I can only find a small kilt and a miniature barrel of oil . . .

  14. Seems to me Galloway should be demanding the right to a hearing before an *Iraqi* court, if he’s certain he did no wrong. After all, it was Iraqis who were dying when oil-for-food money was being diverted from medical supplies into the bank accounts of Saddam’s friends, so why not submit to their judgement? He has nothing to hide, right? And these are the average Iraqis that he claims to care so much about who would be judging his case, after all.

  15. Perjury is a Class A felony… 5 years and a $250,000 fine each 🙂

    So… hopefully Bush will just issue immediate pardons for Scooter and Cheney, right? 🙂

  16. As far as I can tell from my sources in the know here in the UK is that Galloway would serve time for anything in the UK first then be sent to the US to serve any time he owed there. It is a matter of conjection whether or not GG will get charged with anything here; however I am guessing GG is rather hoping that the Telegraph suit against him does not go well for them.

  17. Should be fun to watch Gorgeous George tear Coleman a new one, in addition to the one he tore him last time. Dont really care if he got vouchers (what the hell?) because I agree with his contertion that this is a smoke screen. How many Americans and American companies have been charged with this? My count is one- Midway Trading, from the great state of Texas no less.
    http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/4361838.stm
    So hows about we bring fire on our own and wait on cleaning up abroad for later.

  18. This may be hopelessly quaint, but some of us (still) think that good policy–and corrections to failed policy–starts with basic understanding of what has happened. Bad information leads to bad decisions.

    People who spread lies are diminishing the value of the information that an open society needs. This is one of the things that makes Galloway despicable. The plaintive cry, in these comments and elsewhere, is that “others do it!” While obviously true, this hardly exonerates Galloway, as Hitchens’ piece makes quite clear.

    As far as Plame Name Game indictments: same principle. If an honest and capable prosecutor hands down indictments, the public wins. The wrongly-accused will have a chance to clear their names. The properly-accused will have a chance to suffer justice. Already, Fitzgerald’s investigation has indirectly shed a great deal of light on how “insider ball” is played by the Washington elites (example, latest “Just One Minute post).”:http://justoneminute.typepad.com/main/2005/10/baby_steps_towa.html Though you wouldn’t know it from reading the NYT. But then, the media’s interests and those of the public are hardly aligned in a case like this. The Times, the WaPo, and other institutions have long since staked out their own positions. They must be defended.

  19. Re: Plame Game

    I think the issue is quite a bit bigger than you’re intimating, #24.

    The charges could be very serious and, if some are proven, would carry severe penalties. And rightly so. Compromising national security and the lives of CIA operatives, especially in wartime, should and will not be tolerated in America.

    I’m frankly concerned about the ability of the accused to carry out their duties, as well as continuing to have access to classified information that they may (perhaps again) be tempted to exploit in their own defense.

    For the good of the country, the accused should immediately resign their offices and renounce their access to classified info. We cannot have it any other way if we are serious about the law applying to everyone, as it does and should.

    And if the accused are also serious about national security, they would resign without protest. There are certainly other non-compromised individuals who could serve just as well but not be tainted or tempted.

    But I’ve long ago lost faith that our current crop of leaders care about anything other than their political butts. And perhaps we will get another lesson why this is not just wrong but dangerous.

  20. BTW – I would like to see a post on the Intelligence Identities Protection Act, with opinions for and against.

    My own view is that it was a good idea at the time, and definitely threw a bucket of cold water on Comrade Agee and those communist grubs at Counterspy. But the law is so weak (as you Plamers will learn sooner or later) that the only way to get a conviction is to have someone plead guilty to it to avoid a more serious charge.

    Strengthen it, or dump it? I’m thinking stregthen it, since outing CIA agents is not free speech. If it is to be given some teeth, which side of that debate is the Valerie Plame Brigade going to be on? And which side is the MSM going to be on?

  21. Hey, the S Class were some very honorable submarines. I believe both the US and Royal navies each had an S Class.

  22. Whether Galloway lied or not I cannot tell, not as yet. But I know that Bush lied — big lies — to get us into Iraq. I know that Cheney lied for the same reason. I know that their cronies lied — Libby, Rove, Wolfowitz, Pearle, etc. And I am amazed at the din of noise I hear about a possible Galloway lie, which would be neither here nor there though it were true, while there is all but full silence vis a vis the big lies, which have cost tens of thousands of lives and thrown the whole world in a turmoil. Have I missed something somewhere? Den Sack schlaegt man doch den Esel meint man. You kick the saddle bag cuz you afraid to kick the donkey.

  23. Careful, Ambrosio, your moonbattery is showing.

    Amazing that folks like Galloway with his long record have full benefit of the doubt, but the same standards don’t seem to apply elsewhere. The fact that the justifications for the war were provably manifold, that concerns about WMDs expressed over the years by Republicans, Democrats, and numerous foreign governments, etc… well, all that’s down the memory hole. Maybe if you yell loudly enough, you can distract attention from all that.

    The biggest lies of the Iraq war have come from the Left – have always and consistently done so.

    But then, lies have always been seen as just a means to an end for the hard Left. And the ends of those who give “Il Duce” Galloway and his ilk a pass, as Ambrosio does, are certainly clear enough.

  24. Ambrosio,
    You know nothing of the kind. You cannot actually provide any backing for your attacks upon the Bush adminstration.

    Meanwhile, Galloway has been caught making brazen false factual statements. And has been shown to be actively supporting mass murderers and terrorists.

    We know you from your own chosen buddies.

  25. Give us all a break, folks! So what if Galloway accepted money from Saddam Hussein? I heard that George Bush Sr. flew overseas to accept about 80 million from Kuwait as a rewqard for him ordering the strikes against Iraq, a war crime in itself. Long before that the US embellished Iraq with weaponry of every kind so it could wage its proxy war against Iraq for holding Americans (that Iran stated were spies (no surprise to any of us, no?))) hosatge for 444 days and that war lasted for 8 years and about a million lives were lost. Saddam Hussein, like Osama Bin Laden, were the sweetheaarts and darlings and very close friends of the US and I recall my father telling me to be wary of those who pat us on our backs in what we may perceive to be friendship when in fact they are looking for a soft spot to stab us later on. Oh, yes! How many members of our Congress accept payoffs for Corporate America, and isn’t it a vast majority of them that accept free trips to israel (to be brainwashed) and routine donations/gifts from israelis and their firsters in the US in the millions of dollars every year? Do those so-called Americans not place the so-called security of that war criminal “state” above the interests of its American citizenry? Read former Congressman Findley’s revealing book “They Dare to Speak Out”. Is this the pot calling the kettle “black”? Isn’t it a fact that Washington has become another israeli occupied territory? Has not the israeli elements in the USA got our White House, Congress, State, Defense, and Justice departments by the balls so that their hearts and minds have to follow, and they have to comply with their demands and dictates? Have Americans become cowardly mice? John Sheehan said it best: “Whenever I hear that israel is the only friend we have in the Middle East, I remember when before there was an israel, we had no enemies in the Middle East.” That should sum it up for all of you here.
    With salaam to those who seek justice and reject that which is evil in our world today in every tomorrow to come.

    Yousef

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