That's the most likely thing.
The Galloway testimony didn't help them there.
``Galloway: the man who took on America,'' ran a headline in The Independent newspaper on Thursday.
On Tuesday, he called the panel of senators a ``lickspittle Republican committee'' and accused them of ``the mother of all smoke screens.''
Upon his return Wednesday, he was given a standing ovation by hundreds of people at a rally in London.
``He blasted the whole of the U.S. Senate,'' said Abdul Khaliq Mian, a member of Respect, the anti-war party founded by Galloway.
Galloway's no-holds-barred testimony won widespread praise in a country where many accuse Prime Minister Tony Blair's government of taking a supine approach to relations with the United States.
``In one hour, George Galloway has shown how to do what a succession of British ministers ... have conspicuously failed to do: to stand up to American bullying and mendacity,'' reader Andy Bailey wrote in a letter to the editor of the Guardian.
The New York Times said that Mr Galloway appeared to catch the Senate panel off guard and his “aggressive posture and tone seemed to flummox Senator Coleman”. It added: “Mr Galloway, accustomed to the rancorous debate of the House of Commons, more than held his own before the committee.” It noted that the panel had produced no documents showing that he had received any Iraqi money.
The Washington Post called Mr Galloway a formidable debater who launched a “fiery attack on three decades of US policy towards Iraq”.
The Wall Street Journal said that the MP had exasperated the senators by using the hearing to criticise the Iraq war.
“Galloway described the committee chairman, Minnesota Republican Norm Coleman, as a ‘pro-war, neocon hawk and the lickspittle of George W. Bush’ who, he said, sought revenge against anyone who did not support the invasion of Iraq,” as the Los Angeles Times put it. |
