May 18, 2005

Sissy Willis gives us the real story on George Galloway's appearance in front of that Senate OFF investigatory committee:
Galloway admits he sold his soul

Calm and methodical in his questioning, Committee Chair of the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations Senator Norm Coleman has the upper hand as studiedly hysterical anti-Bush Brit George Galloway tries to change the subject with groundless accusations against his accusers during Oil-for-Food hearings this morning and afternoon.

"I gave my heart and soul to try to save the Iraqis who were dying because of the sanctions," keens an unspeakably rude and puerile and pompous British MP George Galloway in a classic Marcusian "fiction is truth" inversion offense during Norm Coleman's Oil-for-Food Committee hearing. Rough live transcription:

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 argument for invading iraq was a big pack of lies. I turned out to be right, and you turned out to be wrong. If the world had listened to Kofi Annan . . .  to Jacques Chirac . . . to me and the anti-war movement, none of this would have happened.  This is the mother of all smokescreens.  You are trying to divert attention from the crimes that you have committed. Have a look at Halliburton . . . the oil that you didn't even meter, that you were shipping out of the country and went who knows where . . . The real sanctions were your own corporations backed by your government.

Unfortunately, little of the hearing is available to us live, as the cables -- even FOXNews -- go live only when things "heat up," giving the advantage to the Brit's hot-headed performance. His rabidly anti-Bush soundbites will be manna for the gaping media maw in the coming news cycles. Presumably that's Galloway's strategy, but we have a gut feeling the truth will out. We won the Revolutionary War fergossake.  This shouldn't be so hard. Coleman gives the impression of a skilled fisherman letting a barracuda on the line wear itself out thrashing before the fisherman effortlessly reels him in.  Galloway will make a lovely trophy on the wall behind Norm Coleman's desk.

Here's a little background on the dynamics of this historic encounter from the Telegram[Sic.--She means The Telegraph--Jen]:

Room 106 of the Senate's Dirksen Building provides the setting today for a clash of two very different political cultures: the grand and slightly ponderous tradition of Capitol Hill and the more demotic, quickfire approach of the new MP for Bethnal Green and Bow.

Advisers to Senator Norm Coleman, the Republican chairing today's hearing, confidently predicted that Mr Galloway was in for a surprise.

"He will be grilled as never before," said one aide. "He won't be able to turn it into some sort of circus. This is deadly serious and he will be called to account."

Sissy's right about America winning that Revolutionary War thing...and it seems that on occasion, Great Britain is ready to refight it in little ways like this one:
the British papers almost universally reported that
Galloway "won" the day and did so with an obvious kind of pride that their Gorgeous George had shown up his "Colonial" counterparts by being more glib, more eloquent, more of an orator and ironically, given his position of being almost certainly complicit in the greatest fraud/scam in world history, the lone occupant of the moral high ground.
And yet the Brits know in their hearts he's probably guilty of committing these crimes against the Iraqi people by taking Saddam's bribes and working the scam by disguising his organization as a charity named for an Iraqi child with cancer.
It was quite a performance.
But he didn't answer the questions Sen. Carl Levin put to him and he didn't satisfy anyone watching on C-SPAN that there was good reason to believe he'd been falsely accused.
If (or should I say when?) it's proven he lied to the Committee, will he serve the requisite jail time in the U.S.A. for Contempt of Congress?
(Don't let it be lost on you--because it wasn't on Galloway--that both Senators Levin and Coleman are Jewish.
And Galloway's no big friend of the Chosen People to say the very least.)
He who laughs last, laughs best; Georgie may be laughing now, but as the cited post makes clear, it may be Coleman and Levin who are laughing last when they fit Galloway for an orange jumpsuit.
I will admit, though, that the man has a terrific vocabulary and certainly is a master in how to dress people down!
He should give John Bolton some pointers!
H/T the Divine Miss Lucianne.