{"id":169,"date":"2005-05-18T09:04:04","date_gmt":"2005-05-18T13:04:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.folsoms.net\/wordpress\/?p=169"},"modified":"2005-07-15T14:52:44","modified_gmt":"2005-07-15T18:52:44","slug":"a-british-pm-tells-the-emperors-of-the-senate-that-they-have-no-clothes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.folsoms.net\/wordpress\/?p=169","title":{"rendered":"A British PM tells the Emperors of the Senate that they have no clothes"},"content":{"rendered":"

From British Member of Parliament George Galloway<\/a>:<\/p>\n

“I told the world that Iraq, contrary to your claims, did not have weapons of mass destruction. I told the world, contrary to your claims, that Iraq had no connection to al Qaeda. I told the world, contrary to your claims, that Iraq had no connection to the atrocity on 9\/11, 2001,” he told Coleman. <\/p>\n

“Senator, in everything I said about Iraq, I turned out to be right and you turned out to be wrong. And 100,000 people have paid with their lives — 1,600 of them American soldiers sent to their deaths on a pack of lies, 15,000 of them wounded, many of them disabled forever, on a pack of lies.”<\/p>\n

He added: “Senator, this is the mother of all smokescreens. You are trying to divert attention from the crimes that you supported.”
\n…
\n<\/em>
\nColeman, a former district attorney, told Galloway before his sworn testimony that “senior Iraqi officials have confirmed that you, in fact, received oil allocations and that the documents that identify you as an allocation recipient are valid.”<\/p>\n

Galloway challenged that accusation in his opening statement.<\/p>\n


\n“Now, I know that standards have slipped over the last few years in Washington, but for a lawyer, you’re remarkably cavalier with any idea of justice,” he told Coleman.
\n<\/em>
\n
\nHe said he was “friendly” with former Iraqi Foreign Minister Tariq Aziz and met him many times but that he met with Saddam only twice — in 1994 and in 2002 — the last time to persuade Saddam to allow U.N. weapons inspectors into the country.<\/p>\n

He said he had met with Saddam “exactly as many times as Donald Rumsfeld has met with him.”<\/p>\n

“The difference is Donald Rumsfeld met him to sell him guns and give him maps,” Galloway said in his heated opening statement.<\/p>\n

“I met him to try and bring about an end to sanctions, suffering and war, and on the second occasion, I met him to try and persuade him to allow Hans Blix and U.N. inspectors back into country.”<\/p>\n

Galloway complained that the panel had determined his guilt without speaking to him.<\/p>\n

“You have my name on lists provided to you… by the convicted bank robber and fraudster and con man Ahmed Chalabi, who many people, to their credit, in your country now realize played a decisive role in leading your country into the disaster in Iraq,” Galloway told the panel.<\/p>\n

Other allegations reportedly came from Iraqi detainees.<\/p>\n


\n“In these circumstances, knowing what the world knows about how you treat prisoners in Abu Ghraib prison, in Bagram Air Base [Afghanistan], in Guantanamo Bay — including, if I may say, British citizens being held in those places — I’m not sure how much credibility anyone would put on anything you manage to get from a prisoner in those circumstances,” he said.<\/em>
\nYou tell’em, dude<\/strong>. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

From British Member of Parliament George Galloway: “I told the world that Iraq, contrary to your claims, did not have weapons of mass destruction. I told the world, contrary to your claims, that Iraq had no connection to al Qaeda. I told the world, contrary to your claims, that Iraq had no connection to the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-169","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.folsoms.net\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/169","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.folsoms.net\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.folsoms.net\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.folsoms.net\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.folsoms.net\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=169"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.folsoms.net\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/169\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.folsoms.net\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=169"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.folsoms.net\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=169"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.folsoms.net\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=169"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}