Something I’m wondering: if anti-war protestors are de facto Hussein supporters, what does that make pro-war folks? After all, Bin Laden’s explicit reason for bombing the WTC was to spark a war between the Middle East and the United States in order to heighten anti-American sentiments in the Middle East.
I wish December and ilk would go ahead and fess up to the bribes they’re taking from Bin Laden. They sure look like traitors to me.
Daniel
Cite? I thoght he mostly wanted to kill Americans, Christians, and Jews.
http://politics.guardian.co.uk/labour/story/0,9061,942319,00.html
Looks like Galloway is toast.
If the allegations are true, then I’d hope you’re right. However, according to the Guardian again:
I hope the truth does come out, and whoever is guilty gets their deserved punishment.
It’s hard to find bin Laden’s words on the Web, but we can look at some summaries:
And everywhere you look, bin Laden has used US attacks against the Middle East as recruiting tools in his speeches.
december-logic conclusion? People that support US attacks in the Middle East support Bin Laden.
Daniel
Galloway has responded to the charges in a piece published in the Independent here. After reading it, I’ve come to the conclusion that he’s either guiltier than sin, or a complete buffoon. From his rebuttal:
No, they claimed you skimmed money from the oil for food program, not that you directly traded in oil and food. Therefore your protests that you’ve “never seen a barrel of oil” or “which food” is a red herring. For a guy complaining about misinformation this is too much. OTOH, “where is the money?” is a legitimate question- and if he checks the bank statements for the Mariam Appeal (the charity set up to help an Iraqi girl with leukemia that wound up being used as Galloway’s personal travel fund- currently their financial records are secret) he may have his answer.
I’m not convinced that he is guilty (I’d need to see a paper trail of money for that) but his defense really does read like the desperate act of a guilty man.
Can I just point out the Miriam Fund IS NOT a registered charity, it is explicitly a political campaign organisation.
I understand your bewilderment at my juxtaposing of two seemingly unconnected stories, if you are not pretty well aware of the small UK issues that hardly ever make news outside of the UK it must have seemed a bit odd.
The connection is that the 20 year old miners dispute had the head of the union concerned set up by persons unknown in a way to undermine his credibility, and by the very same newspaper.
This story was slightly believable in that Mr Arthur Scargill had previously visited Colonal Ghadhaffi in the latters famous desert tent.
The story was repeated by the tv news, epsecially the BBC which was also seriously distorting events at gathering places for the miners, such as Orgreave coke works.
The story got repeated often, the BBC is taken to be a fairly authorative source and so its reports lent more credibility to the false allegations, just by its repeating of those allegations.
All those allegations were unfounded, Mr Arthur Scargill sued for libel and won damages, and the BBC itself admitted to serious shortcomings in its reporting of various events during the miners disput, some eight years later when the whole issue was well out of the public eye.
The connection is this, allegations have been made against an anit-war campaigner that strongly suggest corruption, but this has been reported in a newspaper that has a very heavy editorial bias which makes any political story coming from them very suspect.
However the BBC has reported this headline story and by dint of repetition, the story will get more authority, and the staff at the BBC are very well versed in the effects of its reporting.
The independance of the BBC has always been its gemstone, but in fact the BBC will report stories in ways that suits the political climate and leaders of the day when they are told.
There are now legal proceedings ongoing, what this should mean is that responsible news organisations should be very careful of what they report and how it may be interpreted by the public in case they become embroiled in the libel action themselves.
I notice that the ‘Torygraph’ has continued with its allegations, legal action notwithstanding, and this is especially venal because they have such a wide audience and are also one of the parties involved in the litigation.
Seems to me that the ‘Torygraph’ is trying that little but too hard to make the shit stick, they seem to be going the extra mile, when in fact they should now be withdrawing from making further allegations until the court case.
The idea of Galloway being involved in piddling little oil transactions of £375k is laughable in an industry where the sums of money involved run into nine figures.The fact that the only folk who could actually dip into the oil for food money work in New York for the UN and that any payments would be extremely easy to verify should sound the credibility alarm bells a-ringing.
I notice that the story has shifted away from the oil dealing, which was clearly rubbish, to straight handing over money or demands for cash. Basically it looks to me like the ‘Torygraph’ is trying to shift the issue from an absurd and utterly unlikely accusation, to one where perhaps it is not as obviously stupid and hence more difficult to deny without a lot more investigation.
This is a classic tactic, when you are losing the argument by holding a ridiculous postion, then change your position and conveniently ignore that claptrap you previously spouted.
True, if it was a registered charity he’d have to open the books. From The Guardian:
On preview I see that casdave has responded- I’ll point out that the Telegraph is in no way backing away from their original claims or changing their position and that these new accusations are from information that’s just now becoming available. Also note that the Guardian (about as lefty as you can get) is citing a lot of this info as well. Look, either the documents say what the Telegraph claims or they don’t. If they don’t, then you’re correct and they’re manufacturing this whole episode- but so far that doesn’t seem to be the case. If they do say what they claim that they say, then either the documents are real and Galloway rightfully goes down or the docs are fake and the Telegraph, not knowing this, acted in good faith.
That was his cut, annually.
Surprisingly, no. The books and accounts of the oil-for-food program are not transparent. Moreover, any payments would be run through several intermediaries.
This column from the New York Times supports Beagle’s point.
The whole article is well worth reading.
Since we’re on the subject of Galloway, I just saw this story posted on the Telegraph- He’d give kilts and whisky to a legless Muslim
Read Galloways statement in reponse to these allegations.
http://www.channel4.com/news/2003/04/week_3/22_gall.html
I still do not believe that he specifically asked for oil contracts to gauruntee income for his organistions, and this is what is alleged, not a series of one off payments, but an ongoing oil contract, it should not be too hard to determine if he or one of his charitable organisations has such a contract.
As for the argument about if the documents were proven false, then the ‘Torygraph’ was acting in good faith, sorry it will not wash in UK courts and it is just an instrument with which to provide some semblance of deniability.
If these allegations are false (and as yet they are nothing more than highly suspect allegations at best) the ‘Torygraph’ will be deemed to have libelled Galloway.If they are proven false then the provenance of the documents will be far more interesting, since they miraculously survived all the looting, fire and expenditure of cruise missiles, and yet so many other documents did not.
There has been a concerted campaign to tarnish Galloway for many years, but every time he goes to law he wins, how strange, is it possible that his accusers are the ones who should be facing the inquiries ?
http://news.scotsman.com/topics.cfm?id=463082003&tid=818
It is a classic strategy to include false information within a body of truthful information, some of the letters that have been found within this folder have been confirmed by Galloway to be written by him, mostly in matters relating to the Miriam appeal which I am sure most folk will already know was an appeal to obtain medical treatment for a child who would have died without it.
The crucial document states that Galloway allegedly wanted a contract that would net his organisation with between 10 to 15 cents a barrel, and the ‘Torygraph’ then extrapolated a figure of £375k from the figures supposedly involved in this alleged contract.This is around 6 million barrels of oil per year,a significan amount indeed, but of this oil trading organisation, not a trace.
This amount of oil would be sure to be part of a formal contract, there would have to be facilities for transferring oil, cash, intermediaries, employees all number of things besides.
It is somewhat surprising that the company set up to carry out this trading has not been named in any document, just a few names of people who trade in other commodities in differant Middle Eastern markets.
Is it possible that other Iraqi agents were using the Galloway name to cover their trading ?
It is possible I suppose, it is possible that cover was needed to purchase banned imports but this is such a small operation in terms of the oil world and one would think it would be carried out exclusively outside Iraq.
All we have is the text of a document whose provenance is very dubious, this document has not yet been formally examined for its authenticity and yet there are serious doubts as to why straight English word and intitials would be used in a text that is otherwise in Arabic, that certain symbols of office look amateurish on the documents and even that it is simply not the way the Iraqi foreign ministry formats such documents.
What we have for certain is a massive distraction in the UK from issues such as why we went to war in the first place, just where are those WMD ?
The Guardian outlines the dispute right here also. Obviously, I don’t have any inside information on whether the allegations are true.
Reading the Guardian article, which outlines the circumstances under which the documents were allegedly found, tends to add credibility to their authenticity. Galloway is making several shrill illogical arguments in response,
I don’t have a lot of time to go into it, but these denials are incomplete, don’t connect with the facts as we now know them, and require a huge leap of faith. “Black operation”? Presumably they have black helicopters. Um, some proof for that would be nice. Of course, the lack of proof just proves how black the operation is. :dubious:
I’ve read his response and have already pointed out that it comes up lacking- his claim that “To the best of my knowledge (cough weasel words cough), I have never met an officer of the Iraqi intelligence.” is completely implausable- if you were a foreign visitor to Iraq (especially a high profile one), you met with Iraqi Intelligence, period. You say “every time he goes to law he wins”, I say he’s been reprimanded several times for his shady dealings. As for who this organizations is and how it could’ve been achieved, this article in the Independent sheds some light.
Well we can all speculate at mechanisms that make this possible, but they are not facts, and when facts are examined in court, Galloway wins, and his opponents arguments are often so weak that they settle out of court and apologise in public.
Galloway has advocated very unpopular policies that earned him approbrium from all the right wing press, his stance on Northern Ireland is a case in point, and yet much of what he advocated is now mainstream policy and is cited as statesmanship when Blair is involved.
Apply Occams razor here, a vociferous opponent of war has allegations made about him, surprisingly allegations have been made before when he opposed other policies.Each time he has held his accusers to account he has been proved right, his accusers have had to pay up and say sorry.
Is it possible that he has been accused yet again and unjustly, or is he as dishonest as his other accusers have been proven to be ?
The article isn’t up on their web site yet, but the headline is.
I didn’t see this link, but here’s some more documentation:
[url=http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2003/04/24/ngall24.xml]How Saddam tried to cover up Galloway’s links with regime
[/quote]
Here’s the part that’s especially damning to the notion that the documents represent some low-level Iraqi intelligence guys running a scam of their own:
Oops. Sorry for the screwed up link. Preview is your friend.