[Peace-discuss] Brit cat among senatorial pigeons

[C. G. Estabrook]

[Ah, I get a kick out of this... --CGE]

	Galloway and the mother of all invective
	Oliver Burkeman on the Respect MP's Washington performance
	Wednesday May 18, 2005
	The Guardian

Whatever else you made of him, when it came to delivering sustained
barrages of political invective, you had to salute his indefatigability.

George Galloway stormed up to Capitol Hill yesterday morning for the
confrontation of his career, firing scatter-shot insults at the senators
who had accused him of profiting illegally from Iraqi oil sales.

They were "neo-cons" and "Zionists" and a "pro-war lynch mob", he raged,
who belonged to a "lickspittle Republican committee" that was engaged in
creating "the mother of all smokescreens".

Before the hearing began, the MP for Bethnal Green and Bow even had some
scorn left over to bestow generously upon the pro-war writer Christopher
Hitchens. "You're a drink-soaked former-Trotskyist popinjay," Mr Galloway
informed him. "Your hands are shaking. You badly need another drink," he
added later, ignoring Mr Hitchens's questions and staring intently ahead.

"And you're a drink-soaked..." Eventually Mr Hitchens gave up. "You're a
real thug, aren't you?" he hissed, stalking away.

It was a hint of what was to come: not so much political theatre as
political bloodsports - and with the senators, at least, it was Mr
Galloway who emerged with the flesh between his teeth.

"I know that standards have slipped in Washington in recent years, but for
a lawyer, you're remarkably cavalier with any idea of justice," he told
Norm Coleman, the Minnesota Republican who chairs the senate
investigations committee, after taking his seat at the front of the
high-ceilinged hearing room, and swearing an oath to tell the truth.

"I'm 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."

The culture clash between Mr Galloway's bruising style and the soporific
gentility of senate proceedings could hardly have been more pronounced,
and drew audible gasps and laughs of disbelief from the audience. "I met
Saddam Hussein exactly the same number of times as Donald Rumsfeld met
him," Mr Galloway went on. "The difference is that Donald Rumsfeld met him
to sell him guns, and to give him maps the better to target those guns."

American reporters seemed as fascinated as the British media: at one point
yesterday, before it was his turn to speak, Mr Galloway strode from the
room, sending journalists of all nationalities rushing after him - only to
discover that he was going to the lavatory.

By condemning him in their report without interviewing him, the senators
had already given Mr Galloway the upper hand. But not everything was in
his favour. For a start, only two senators were present, sabotaging Mr
Galloway's efforts to attack the whole lickspittle lot of them - and one
of the two, the Democrat Carl Levin, had spent much of his opening
statement attacking the hypocrisy of the US government in allegedly
allowing American firms to benefit from Iraqi oil corruption.

Even so, Mr Galloway was in his element, playing the role he relishes the
most: the little guy squaring up for a fight with the establishment.

For these purposes, Senator Coleman served symbolically to represent all
the evil in the world - the entire Republican party, the conscience of
George Bush, the US government and the British government, too: no wonder
his weak smile looked so nauseous.

"I gave my heart and soul to stop you committing the disaster that you did
commit in invading Iraq," Mr Galloway told him. "Senator, in everything I
said about Iraq, I turned out to be right and you turned out to be wrong."

And yet for all his anti-establishment credentials, Mr Galloway is as
practised as any of his New Labour enemies at squirming away from awkward
questions. Under scrutiny by Senator Levin, he deployed a classic example
of the bait-and-switch technique that is the government minister's best
defence in difficult questioning.

But Mr Galloway Goes To Washington had never really been an exercise in
clarifying the facts. It was an exercise in giving Norm Coleman, and, by
extension, the Bush administration, a black eye - mere days after the
bloody nose that the Respect MP took credit for having given Tony Blair.
And it went as well as Mr Galloway could have wished.

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