Interesting Timing: They are attacking Galloway

[Moses]

Well well well. Just as George Galloway has been vindicated by the secret papers and two papers that willingly used forged documents to defame him had admitted wrongdoing in court actions, and just as George Galloway defeated an Ukraeli Labour Party Ringer as a new party candidate, certain parties have renewed their attacks-- pointing up just who was behind the forged documents and the frame-up, if you know the players:

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UK politician targeted by U.S. Senate is local hero
Thu May 12, 2005 08:42 AM ET
By Peter Graff

LONDON (Reuters) - To the U.S. Senate he may have been receiving favors from Saddam Hussein, but to the inner London voters who elected him to parliament last week, George Galloway is the only one who speaks their language.

A maverick Scottish politician who was kicked out of Prime Minister Tony Blair's Labour party for his outspoken opposition to the Iraq war, Galloway won a ferocious campaign for parliament last week in Bethnal Green, east London, where some street signs are in Bengali.

A U.S. Senate committee report said Galloway received an allocation to export 20 million barrels of Iraqi oil, personally approved by the former dictator, whom he visited several times in the 1990s as a long-standing opponent of U.N. sanctions.

"Rubbish," said Shakil Ahmed, proprietor of Bashir and Sons tailors on the neighborhood's main street, Brick Lane. "We've heard it all before. He won his election fair and square."

According to the Senate report, Saddam-approved export rights under the United Nations oil-for-food program could have been sold to traders for 30 cents a barrel, netting millions of dollars intended to be spent on food aid for Iraqis.

Galloway denies he took any money from Saddam and has sued and won libel judgments against two newspapers that printed similar accusations in the past.


BITTER CAMPAIGN

"This is a lickspittle Republican committee acting on the wishes of George W. Bush," he said of the bipartisan Senate panel, which also implicated former French Interior Minister Charles Pasqua after a year-long probe. "Let me repeat: I have never traded in a barrel of oil or any vouchers for it."

The election campaign that pitted Galloway against Oona King, a high-profile Blair supporter, was one of the bitterest in living memory. King, who is Jewish and half black, accused Galloway of appealing to racial and religious bias in a district where about half of voters are Muslims of Bangladeshi origin.

Galloway, who greeted supporters with "Salaam Aleikum," said King's support for the war had helped kill thousands -- "many of whom have blacker faces than she does."

He won narrowly in a district once seen as one of the safest Labour seats in the country.

Student Abdul Hakim, 32, said anything Galloway might have done wrong was "in the past."

"He talks a lot about Asian people. Good things. He went to Bangladesh. He went to my village," he said.

Some voters expressed sympathy for King, who was known even among critics as a hard-working local advocate. But by supporting a war they opposed, she had failed to represent them.

"It's got nothing to do with George Galloway. People voted for Galloway as a protest," said Mohammed, a grocer at a shop selling Halal meat and tropical vegetables.

"Not a single time did Oona King put their views before parliament. She is supposed to represent the constituents. The war was going to happen anyway, but she could have stood up and said: 'My constituents did not want it'."

[Moses]

MP rejects fresh Iraq kickback claim
From correspondents in London
12may05
BRITISH MP George Galloway and former French cabinet minister Charles Pasqua have denied allegations in a US Senate report that they received kickbacks from the ousted Iraqi regime, with Mr Galloway labelling the charges a "big lie".

Mr Galloway, who set up his own left-wing party, Respect, after being expelled from the Labour Party of Prime Minister Tony Blair over the Iraq war, won libel damages from a British newspaper last year after it made similar claims.

"This is a very old allegation," he told BBC radio.

"It's the allegation that led the (London) Daily Telegraph to spectacular defeat in the libel courts.

"It doesn't matter how long you repeat a falsehood, it doesn't become other than a falsehood.

"The big lie technique of telling a big lie often enough in the hope that people will believe it, is clearly at work here."

In a more measured statement, Mr Pasqua, who served as France's interior minister from 1993 to 1995, also rejected allegations he benefited financially from the regime of former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein.

"In January 2004, and then again in October 2004, I denied having received any advantages whatsoever, in any form, from the Iraqi authorities or the regime of Saddam Hussein," he said.

"The report published by the US Senate Permanent Sub-committee on Investigations is largely based on these earlier reports. Once again, I deny the allegations.

"Having not had any government responsibilities in France since 1995, I hope that those running the affairs of this country since that date will assume their own responsibilities."

The US committee said earlier today that it had "detailed evidence" that under the Saddam-era UN oil-for-food program, Iraq gave 20 million barrels of oil in allocations to Mr Galloway and 11 million barrels to Mr Pasqua.

Mr Galloway called the investigation "a very peculiar kind of committee", saying its members had not contacted him, even when he requested a hearing. [like, say, the "unamerican activities committee"?]

"So it's no kind of investigation, merely the repetition of false allegations of my name being on a list," he said.

"For what it's worth, I will repeat this for the 500th time: I have never seen a barrel of oil, I have never seen a voucher for a barrel of oil, I have never bought one, sold one, traded in one and neither has anyone on my behalf."

Asked why he had been named, Mr Galloway claimed he was being targeted for opposing the Iraq war.

"This is George (W.) Bush's Republican Party committee seeking to smear those who stood against their policy on war with Iraq and who have been proved right," he said.

Mr Galloway was a persistent critic of UN sanctions against Saddam as well as the US-led, British-backed war of March 2003 to unseat him.

In 1994, he was filmed during a visit to Baghdad telling Saddam: "I salute your courage, your strength, your indefatigability."

Mr Galloway insists he was referring to the Iraqi people and that he despised the regime.

Mr Galloway was kicked out of Labour for his vehement opposition to the Iraq war, but got his revenge on Mr Blair by scoring a major upset in last week's general election.

Mr Galloway unseated a Blair loyalist who backed the war, winning an East London seat by appealing to the area's large Muslim population, many of whom were unhappy over the conflict.

In December, he won damages of £150,000 pounds $360,000) from the Daily Telegraph after it reported he had been in the pay of Saddam's regime.

The case is under appeal.

He had previously won damages from US paper Christian Science Monitor for similar allegations.

[Moses]

BBC stands by Galloway interview
The BBC is standing by Jeremy Paxman's election night interview with George Galloway despite receiving over 100 complaints that it was too aggressive.


Mr Paxman's adversarial style has often attracted complaints


The presenter asked the Respect MP, who won Bethnal Green and Bow from Oona King, if he was proud of ousting one of the few black women from Parliament.

Mr Galloway said the question was "preposterous" and soon walked out.

The BBC said Mr Paxman was justified in asking the question because a studio guest had just raised the issue.

'Pertinent'

The guest was former Labour MP Tony Banks.

BBC Head of Political Programmes Sue Inglish said: "Some people found Jeremy Paxman's line of questioning insensitive but, having reviewed the interview in the cold light of day, I do not agree.

"It was Mr Banks who brought up questions of ethnicity and gender.

"When Jeremy Paxman very shortly afterwards had a chance to interview George Galloway, the question he asked was one that many in the audience must at that point have had at the front of their minds: did Mr Galloway feel uncomfortable about unseating one of the few black women MPs?"

Ms Inglish said it was a "pertinent" question to ask and added that the Newsnight presenter was renowned for his "vigorous questioning" and so his directness would not have come as a surprise.

It was Mr Galloway who chose not to take the opportunity to respond, she said.

The former Labour MP instead challenged the Newsnight presenter to congratulate him on his victory.

[Moses]

Mon 16 May 2005
8:11pm (UK)
Galloway in Washington to Demand An Apology

By Victoria Ward, PA, in Washington

George Galloway arrived in Washington tonight and vowed to set the record straight on allegations that he profited from Saddam Hussein’s regime.

The Respect MP said he would be looking for an apology for the way US Senators carried out an investigation in which they accused him of receiving vouchers for millions of barrels of oil from the former dictator.

“It is a schoolboy dossier, full of holes, full of falsehoods,” he said.

“I am not expecting any justice from the innards of the US government but I want to appear not as the accused but as the accusers.”

Mr Galloway said there was no doubt documents cited which allegedly link him to the oil for food scandal were forged and pledged to clear his name.

“I have never bought or sold a drop Iraqi oil or any other commodity in my life,” he added.
The former Labour MP, who was re-elected to Parliament for Bethnal Green and Bow running for his own Respect party, will appear before a Senate hearing tomorrow.

He described the idea that he could have been made a multi-millionaire by Saddam Hussein as “inherently preposterous”.


Latest News:
  news.scotsman.com/latest.cfm

[Moses]

Tuesday's Coleman-Galloway showdown billed as 'epic'
Rob Hotakainen and Kevin Diaz,  Star Tribune Washington Bureau Correspondents
May 17, 2005 GALL0517




WASHINGTON, D.C. -- It might be an understatement to say that George Galloway's showdown today with Sen. Norm Coleman has received a big buildup in England.

Forecasting "an epic confrontation" with Coleman, the Independent on Sunday described Galloway as "a showman who revels in confrontation and a veteran political street-fighter."

Galloway, a member of the British Parliament, is coming to Washington to appear before Coleman's Senate permanent subcommittee on investigations. Galloway says the Minnesota Republican smeared him last week by saying that he got huge oil kickbacks through the U.N. oil-for-food program.

Galloway told London reporters that he's eager to clear his name and that he has no fear of American senators, including Coleman, dismissing him as part of a "neo-con assault" on the United Nations.
"Senator Coleman, the opportunist," said Ron McKay, a spokesman for Galloway. "I'm told he's a lawyer. I don't know where he went to law school, but I think he should be demanding his money back because he doesn't believe in the presumption of innocence."

Compared to Galloway and his spokesman, Coleman has been more muted, saying he looks forward to hearing Galloway answer to the evidence.

In London, Galloway is known as Gorgeous George, a brilliant orator who wears expensive suits and smokes Cuban cigars and who likes to pick on Prime Minister Tony Blair for supporting the war in Iraq.

"Mr. Blair, this is for Iraq," Galloway said to supporters on May 5, after his surprising defeat of a popular Labor incumbent. Galloway, running under the left-wing Respect Party that he created, defeated Oona King after mobilizing a large Bangladeshi Muslim community in east London.

Galloway, who was born in Scotland, has been getting plenty of attention after his improbable political comeback, coming less than two years after he was expelled from the Labor Party for his anti-war views. He has said Blair should resign and be tried as a war criminal.

Galloway, 50, became chair of Labor in Scotland at age 26 and was elected to the House of Commons six years later. In 1994, he was filmed by a television station in Bahgdad, telling Saddam Hussein that he saluted "your courage, your strength and your indefatigability."

"He has been a rabble rouser in Britain," said Norman Ornstein, a scholar at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington. "He may very well be in larger trouble with this investigation. I gather they've got some fairly substantial documentary evidence to suggest that he got plenty of money."

Coleman has used his subcommittee assignment to show how Saddam allegedly benefited from the oil-for-food program. A report from the panel alleges that Galloway received vouchers to buy 20 million barrels of Iraqi oil from 2000 to 2003, which he could then resell at a profit. Evidence also suggests that he used a children's leukemia charity he founded as a cover to conceal oil payments.

Galloway's visit to Washington is expected to cause a media stir, but Coleman says he's not going to debate the pugnacious MP.

"I'd be interested in his explanation of why his name is listed on all these Iraqi documents. ... The evidence speaks for itself," said Coleman.

Coleman sent Galloway a letter offering to help expedite his visa application and reminding him that he would be testifying before the Senate under oath. Coleman said he may "walk him" through some of the evidence, "but in the end I'm not looking for much from him."

Galloway is expected to tell the senators that they relied on faulty intelligence in assembling their report.
"There isn't a shred of evidence that can be produced," said McKay. "Apparently the corroborating statements have been taken from people who are in U.S. custody, be it Abu Ghraib or whatever. Galloway's innocent and is welcoming the opportunity to prove it to the American people."

---

Washington Bureau Correspondent Paul Sand contributed to this report.
The writers are at [e-mail]
and [e-mail]

[Moses]

www.socialistworker.co.uk/article.php4?article_id=6511


How they forged the case against Galloway

by Simon Assaf and Charlie Kimber, assisted by Ann Ashford

The central document used against George Galloway this week by the US senate committee investigating Iraqís oil for food programme is a forgery. Socialist Worker can reveal that evidence crucial to the alleged case against the Respect MP is fake - created after the fall of Baghdad in 2003.

The allegations are another desperate attempt to smear the opponents of the war on Iraq, and to make them appear as the corrupt hirelings of tyranny.

In Britain the material is another dirty weapon to be employed in an effort to destroy George Galloway and halt the rise of Respect.

Most of the accusations hurled against George Galloway by the senate committee on investigations this week were based on testimony that was supposedly freely given by former officials in Saddam Husseinís regime who are now held by US forces.

In many cases these sources are not even named.

But there is one piece of evidence that at first glance seems persuasive. It is in the findings of the Duelfer Report - the conclusions of the Iraq Survey Group headed by Charles Duelfer which last year admitted Iraq did not have weapons of mass destruction.

The senate committee's document says, "According to the evidence in the Duelfer Report, the Hussein regime granted Galloway six oil allocations totalling 20 million barrels of oil."

Annexe B of the section of the Duelfer Report on "Regime finance and procurement" lists what it claims are "Known oil voucher recipients".

According to Duelfer, "This annexe contains the 13 secret lists maintained by vice president Taha Yassin Ramadan al-Jizrawi and the minister for oil, Amir Rashid Muhammad al-Ubaydi. A high level Iraqi State Oil Marketing Organisation (SOMO) official provided the Iraq Survey Group with both English and Arabic versions of these lists on 16 June 2004. The lists reproduced here are the original SOMO translations in English"

The list contains hundreds of names of individuals and corporations, many of which, according to Duelfer, legally dealt in Iraqi oil under the UN's oil for food programme.

The first mention of George Galloway is contract M/09/23. This alleges that 1.014 million barrels of oil were allocated to ìMr Fawwaz Zurayqat - Mr George Galloway - Aredio Petroleum (French)".

Look closely at the entry, which is reproduced above.


The typeface (font) used for "Mr George Galloway" is different to the rest of the line. Indeed the only time this font is used in the entire document is where George Gallowayís name appears.
"Mr George Galloway" does not line up with the rest of the words in the entry. It is at an angle to the other words.


The spacings between "Mr George Galloway" and the rest of the words are inconsistent.

The dash after the words "Mr George Galloway" touches the following word.

The words "Mr George Galloway" are at a different type density (lighter) than the rest of the line.

The most likely explanation is that the words "Mr George Galloway" have been added after the list was prepared, perhaps stuck on and then photocopied to produce the list in the Duelfer Report.

Elsewhere the Duelfer Report revisits this same contract note and, citing an internal Iraqi document, says the allocation was to "Fawaz Zuraiqat - Mariam's Appeal".

Was this the original name, which was then changed in order to smear George Galloway?

[RPankn]

Published on Tuesday, May 17, 2005 by the Times Online (UK)

Galloway vs. The US Senate: Transcript of Statement

George Galloway, Respect MP for Bethnal Green and Bow, delivered this statement to US Senators today who have accused him of corruption

"Senator, I am not now, nor have I ever been, an oil trader. and neither has anyone on my behalf. I have never seen a barrel of oil, owned one, bought one, sold one - and neither has anyone on my behalf.

"Now I know that standards have slipped in the last few years in Washington, but for a lawyer you are remarkably cavalier with any idea of justice. I am here today but last week you already found me guilty. You traduced my name around the world without ever having asked me a single question, without ever having contacted me, without ever written to me or telephoned me, without any attempt to contact me whatsoever. And you call that justice.

"Now I want to deal with the pages that relate to me in this dossier and I want to point out areas where there are - let's be charitable and say errors. Then I want to put this in the context where I believe it ought to be. On the very first page of your document about me you assert that I have had 'many meetings' with Saddam Hussein. This is false.

"I have had two meetings with Saddam Hussein, once in 1994 and once in August of 2002. By no stretch of the English language can that be described as "many meetings" with Saddam Hussein.

"As a matter of fact, I have met Saddam Hussein exactly the same number of times as Donald Rumsfeld met him. The difference is Donald Rumsfeld met him to sell him guns and to give him maps the better to target those guns. I met him to try and bring about an end to sanctions, suffering and war, and on the second of the two occasions, I met him to try and persuade him to let Dr Hans Blix and the United Nations weapons inspectors back into the country - a rather better use of two meetings with Saddam Hussein than your own Secretary of State for Defense made of his.

"I was an opponent of Saddam Hussein when British and Americans governments and businessmen were selling him guns and gas. I used to demonstrate outside the Iraqi embassy when British and American officials were going in and doing commerce.

"You will see from the official parliamentary record, Hansard, from the 15th March 1990 onwards, voluminous evidence that I have a rather better record of opposition to Saddam Hussein than you do and than any other member of the British or American governments do.

"Now you say in this document, you quote a source, you have the gall to quote a source, without ever having asked me whether the allegation from the source is true, that I am 'the owner of a company which has made substantial profits from trading in Iraqi oil'.

"Senator, I do not own any companies, beyond a small company whose entire purpose, whose sole purpose, is to receive the income from my journalistic earnings from my employer, Associated Newspapers, in London. I do not own a company that's been trading in Iraqi oil. And you have no business to carry a quotation, utterly unsubstantiated and false, implying otherwise.

"Now 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 Baghdad. If you had any of the letters against me that you had against Zhirinovsky, and even Pasqua, they would have been up there in your slideshow for the members of your committee today.

"You have my name on lists provided to you by the Duelfer inquiry, provided to him by the convicted bank robber, and fraudster and conman Ahmed Chalabi who many people to their credit in your country now realize played a decisive role in leading your country into the disaster in Iraq.

"There were 270 names on that list originally. That's somehow been filleted down to the names you chose to deal with in this committee. Some of the names on that committee included the former secretary to his Holiness Pope John Paul II, the former head of the African National Congress Presidential office and many others who had one defining characteristic in common: they all stood against the policy of sanctions and war which you vociferously prosecuted and which has led us to this disaster.

"You quote Mr Dahar Yassein Ramadan. Well, you have something on me, I've never met Mr Dahar Yassein Ramadan. Your sub-committee apparently has. But I do know that he's your prisoner, I believe he's in Abu Ghraib prison. I believe he is facing war crimes charges, punishable by death. In these circumstances, knowing what the world knows about how you treat prisoners in Abu Ghraib prison, in Bagram Airbase, in Guantanamo Bay, including I may say, British citizens being held in those places.

"I'm not sure how much credibility anyone would put on anything you manage to get from a prisoner in those circumstances. But you quote 13 words from Dahar Yassein Ramadan whom I have never met. If he said what he said, then he is wrong.

"And 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.

"Now you refer at length to a company names in these documents as Aredio Petroleum. I say to you under oath here today: I have never heard of this company, I have never met anyone from this company. This company has never paid a penny to me and I'll tell you something else: I can assure you that Aredio Petroleum has never paid a single penny to the Mariam Appeal Campaign. Not a thin dime. I don't know who Aredio Petroleum are, but I daresay if you were to ask them they would confirm that they have never met me or ever paid me a penny.

"Whilst I'm on that subject, who is this senior former regime official that you spoke to yesterday? Don't you think I have a right to know? Don't you think the Committee and the public have a right to know who this senior former regime official you were quoting against me interviewed yesterday actually is?

"Now, one of the most serious of the mistakes you have made in this set of documents is, to be frank, such a schoolboy howler as to make a fool of the efforts that you have made. You assert on page 19, not once but twice, that the documents that you are referring to cover a different period in time from the documents covered by The Daily Telegraph which were a subject of a libel action won by me in the High Court in England late last year.

"You state that The Daily Telegraph article cited documents from 1992 and 1993 whilst you are dealing with documents dating from 2001. Senator, The Daily Telegraph's documents date identically to the documents that you were dealing with in your report here. None of The Daily Telegraph's documents dealt with a period of 1992, 1993. I had never set foot in Iraq until late in 1993 - never in my life. There could possibly be no documents relating to Oil-for-Food matters in 1992, 1993, for the Oil-for-Food scheme did not exist at that time.

"And yet you've allocated a full section of this document to claiming that your documents are from a different era to the Daily Telegraph documents when the opposite is true. Your documents and the Daily Telegraph documents deal with exactly the same period.

"But perhaps you were confusing the Daily Telegraph action with the Christian Science Monitor. The Christian Science Monitor did indeed publish on its front pages a set of allegations against me very similar to the ones that your committee have made. They did indeed rely on documents which started in 1992, 1993. These documents were unmasked by the Christian Science Monitor themselves as forgeries.

"Now, the neo-con websites and newspapers in which you're such a hero, senator, were all absolutely cock-a-hoop at the publication of the Christian Science Monitor documents, they were all absolutely convinced of their authenticity. They were all absolutely convinced that these documents showed me receiving $10 million from the Saddam regime. And they were all lies.

"In the same week as the Daily Telegraph published their documents against me, the Christian Science Monitor published theirs which turned out to be forgeries and the British newspaper, Mail on Sunday, purchased a third set of documents which also upon forensic examination turned out to be forgeries. So there's nothing fanciful about this. Nothing at all fanciful about it.

"The existence of forged documents implicating me in commercial activities with the Iraqi regime is a proven fact. It's a proven fact that these forged documents existed and were being circulated amongst right-wing newspapers in Baghdad and around the world in the immediate aftermath of the fall of the Iraqi regime.

"Now, Senator, I gave my heart and soul to oppose the policy that you promoted. I gave my political life's blood to try to stop the mass killing of Iraqis by the sanctions on Iraq which killed one million Iraqis, most of them children, most of them died before they even knew that they were Iraqis, but they died for no other reason other than that they were Iraqis with the misfortune to born at that time. I gave my heart and soul to stop you committing the disaster that you did commit in invading Iraq. And I told the world that your case for the war was a pack of lies.

“I told the world that Iraq, contrary to your claims did not have weapons of mass destruction. I told the world, contrary to your claims, that Iraq had no connection to al-Qaeda. I told the world, contrary to your claims, that Iraq had no connection to the atrocity on 9/11 2001. I told the world, contrary to your claims, that the Iraqi people would resist a British and American invasion of their country and that the fall of Baghdad would not be the beginning of the end, but merely the end of the beginning.

"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. You are trying to divert attention from the crimes that you supported, from the theft of billions of dollars of Iraq's wealth.

"Have a look at the real Oil-for-Food scandal. Have a look at the 14 months you were in charge of Baghdad, the first 14 months when $8.8 billion of Iraq's wealth went missing on your watch. Have a look at Halliburton and other American corporations that stole not only Iraq's money, but the money of the American taxpayer.

"Have a look at the oil that you didn't even meter, that you were shipping out of the country and selling, the proceeds of which went who knows where? Have a look at the $800 million you gave to American military commanders to hand out around the country without even counting it or weighing it.

"Have a look at the real scandal breaking in the newspapers today, revealed in the earlier testimony in this committee. That the biggest sanctions busters were not me or Russian politicians or French politicians. The real sanctions busters were your own companies with the connivance of your own Government."

© 2005 Times Newspapers

###


www.commondreams.org/views05/0517-35.htm

[Moses]

Excellent. He hit the ball out of the Park. In contrast, our own politicians and media are shown to have a very suspicious deficit of truth and intention.