[quote:29196]
'MOTHER OF SMOKESCREENS'
British MP George Galloway launched a blistering broadside against the Senate committee which accused him of taking vouchers for millions of barrels of oil from the former Iraqi regime.
Appearing before the committee, he said senators had gone about their business in a "cavalier fashion"and accused them of "schoolboy errors".
He said the committee was the "mother of all smokescreens" designed to tar the him, the anti-war movement and the French government.
Fixing his eyes firmly on the committee, the former Labour MP delivered his case in a confident and clear manner.
"I am not and never have been an oil trader. I have never seen a barrel of oil, never owned a barrel of oil, I have never sold a barrel of oil, and nor has anyone on my behalf," he told the committee.
He ripped into comittee chairman Norm Coleman, accusing him of damaging his reputation worldwide.
Mr Coleman began the hearing by reading a lengthy list of documents which, he said, showed that Mr Galloway had received allocations of oil vouchers under the former oil-for-food programme.
It has been claimed that Mr Galloway received 20 million barrels of oil from the ousted Iraqi leader.
In a lengthy opening statement, Mr Galloway insisted that 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," he said.
The MP said the documents brought in evidence against him were simply "false".
The committee quizzed Mr Galloway on his alleged dealings with Saddam during more than a decade of campaigning for the lifting of United Nations sanctions from Iraq.
Mr Galloway rejected a claim in the sub committee's report that he 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.
"I was an opponent of Saddam Hussein when British and American governments and businessmen were selling him guns and gas."
He flatly rejected an accusation that he was the owner of a company which had made substantial profits from trading in Iraqi oil.
The UN oil-for-food program, which began in late 1996 and ended in 2003, was aimed at easing the impact of sanctions imposed after Saddam's troops invaded Kuwait in 1990.
Baghdad was allowed to sell oil to buy basic goods and could negotiate its own contracts, but the program has been dogged by allegations of massive fraud and charges Saddam used it to buy influence in the West.[/quote:29196]
http://www.sky.com/skynews/article/0,,3 ... 52,00.html
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/4556113.stm
watched it all just now. Galloway spoke down to and owned the senators, a brilliant speaker, a real politician who fights for what he believes in.
MOTHER OF SMOKESCREENS
MOTHER OF SMOKESCREENS -
05-17-2005, 11:52 AM
Linear Mode
