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Politics : GOPwinger Lies/Distortions/Omissions/Perversions of Truth -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: bentway who wrote (47428)	5/20/2005 12:18:38 AM
From: Doug R	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 173976

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.

To: bentway who wrote (47428)	5/20/2005 12:19:19 AM
From: Doug R	Respond to of 173976

The London-based al-Quds al-Arabi said Galloway had won another round against the U.S. administration and neo-conservatives when he turned the Senate hearing into a trial against U.S. foreign policy and "its bloody and catastrophic war in Iraq." The independent Palestinian-owned daily said the accused came out victorious, "leaving the American administration in the accusation box, because the question is no longer about coupons and who profited, but about a bloody occupation plan of Iraq that stopped any real democracy and economic prosperity." The paper, distributed in most Arab capitals, added it agreed with Galloway when he said the objective of accusing him was to divert attention from what was happening in Iraq in terms of "massacres being committed by the American forces." The paper insisted the Senate committee could not provide one piece of evidence on Galloway getting a single dollar from Iraqi funds, saying it had built all its accusations on speculations and forged documents. "That's why Mr. Galloway's defense was stronger and more effective," it commented, adding the U.S. campaign was clearly against those who opposed the war on Iraq.

To: bentway who wrote (47428)	5/20/2005 12:22:13 AM
From: Doug R	Respond to of 173976

The United Arab Emirates' al-Khaleej said in its editorial it was not unusual for the U.S. Senate to accuse international leaders of corruption deals involving Saddam Hussein's Iraq because Washington had launched a war based on lies. The pro-government daily, with independent Islamic trends, said U.S. neo-conservatives were accusing those opposed to the war in order to divert attention "from the truth of the (U.S.-British) invasion" of Iraq. It said Galloway had gone to Washington to hold a "war trial and put those who launched it in the accusation box." It opined the United States was in a predicament in Iraq, and instead of finding a way out was still seeking to divert attention from its repercussions. "Just as it failed to cover its lies for going to war, it is failing to explain its bitter results to its people," the paper said, adding Washington was trying to preoccupy public opinion to justify its behavior in Iraq. "But it does not recognize it has put itself in the quicksand: The more it moves, the deeper it sinks," the daily insisted. Egypt's al-Gumhouriya said in a commentary the Iraqis were slipping into the abyss with the massacres being committed against both the Sunnis and Shiites, adding they appeared to be acts of vengeance aimed at driving a wedge between the sects and stopping any political solution to the Iraqi crisis. The mass-circulation, semi-official daily said that meant an indefinite U.S. occupation of the country.

To: bentway who wrote (47428)	5/20/2005 12:24:22 AM
From: Doug R	Respond to of 173976

"The United States was not only aware of Iraqi oil sales which violated U.N. sanctions and provided the bulk of the illicit money Saddam Hussein obtained from circumventing U.N. sanctions," the report said. "On occasion, the United States actually facilitated the illicit oil sales." In fact, the Senate report found that U.S. oil purchases accounted for 52% of the kickbacks paid to the regime in return for sales of cheap oil - more than the rest of the world put together.

To: bentway who wrote (47428)	5/20/2005 12:28:17 AM
From: Doug R	Respond to of 173976

"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."