"Peace" activism, Galloway style

[Hypocolius]

You have to register to read this, http://portal.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main.jhtml;

but the gist is:

It doesn't get much worse than this. George Galloway is Britain's most active and visible peace campaigner. The Labour MP for Glasgow Kelvin did not just oppose the recent campaign against Saddam Hussein; he lobbied equally aggressively against the first Gulf war, and – during the years in between – for an end to sanctions.

Yesterday, The Daily Telegraph's correspondent in Baghdad, David Blair, unearthed papers detailing alleged payments from Saddam's intelligence service to Mr Galloway through a Jordanian intermediary.

There is a word for taking money from enemy regimes: treason. What makes this allegation especially worrying, however, is that the documents suggest that the money has been coming out of Iraq's oil-for-food programme. In other words, the alleged payments did not come from some personal bank account of Saddam's, but out of the revenue intended to pay for food and medicines for Iraqi civilians: the very people whom Mr Galloway has been so fond of invoking

And JK said that the US peace activists were the worst!

 

[Kashyapa]

Don't paint all peace activists with the same brush. There's bad apples in every bushel. I find Galloway's actions reprehensible, even though I am not pro-war.

 

[Lothian]

Galloway's Reply
Link

 

[Hypocolius]

Galloway's Reply
Link

Yeah, I saw that, it was mentioned in the Telegraph article too. It would be funny it was really true though, wouldn't it?

What are the odds do you reckon? 50%? 25%?

It fits well with the old stereotypes about MPs and scandals as well. The Tories always get caught doing something rude, and Labour get done for some kind of financial shenanigins.

 

[Lothian]

Yeah, I saw that, it was mentioned in the Telegraph article too. It would be funny it was really true though, wouldn't it?

What are the odds do you reckon? 50%? 25%?

It fits well with the old stereotypes about MPs and scandals as well. The Tories always get caught doing something rude, and Labour get done for some kind of financial shenanigins.

I haven’t fully read the article yet. I will when I get home. It depends what has been said. It is common for ‘fact finding’ trips for MPs to be paid (directly or indirectly) by the host. Galloway has, with other MPs, made trips to Iraq. Are the costs of those trips part of the money or are we talking brown envelopes full of cash ?

There appears too many ‘allegedly’s to be good court case material so I suspect Galloway will not sue,

 

[iain]

You have to register to read this, http://portal.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main.jhtml;

but the gist is:

George Galloway is Britain's most active and visible peace campaigner. The Labour MP for Glasgow Kelvin did not just oppose the recent campaign against Saddam Hussein; he lobbied equally aggressively against the first Gulf war, and – during the years in between – for an end to sanctions.

I would disagree with the first statement. I think George Galloway is Britain's most extreme peace campaigner. He has not so much been compaigning for peace but for Saddam. I really don't understand this man and I don't think he in any way represents or reflects the anti-war movement, except for a very extreme minority.

Having said that, I am very suspicious about the "evidence" uncovered by the Telegraph. Galloway says he will sue for libel. If he goes ahead and wins, it could give him a credibility he doesn't deserve.

 

[Skeptic]

It fits well with the old stereotypes about MPs and scandals as well. The Tories always get caught doing something rude, and Labour get done for some kind of financial shenanigins.

(sigh)

True. As the old joke goes, in England--a nation that is essentially a chunk of coal surrounded by an sea full of fish--it took labor to create a shortage of both...

Seriously, though, while I would hardly be surprised if it's true, I am on principle suspicious of "shocking discoveries of disgusting wrongdoings" in newspapers about their political opponents.

 

[aerocontrols]

I haven’t fully read the article yet. I will when I get home. It depends what has been said. It is common for ‘fact finding’ trips for MPs to be paid (directly or indirectly) by the host. Galloway has, with other MPs, made trips to Iraq. Are the costs of those trips part of the money or are we talking brown envelopes full of cash ?

You should read an entire article . The claim is:

the MP received £375,000 a year from the oil for food programme.

I believe there is a legal term to describe such a transaction.

MattJ

 

[renata]

Update: documents fraudulent

http://ap.tbo.com/ap/breaking/MGAUDQBK5HD.html

The Christian Science Monitor reported on its Web site Thursday that documents it relied on in reporting that Iraq authorized six payments to a British lawmaker totaling more than $10 million dollars were fraudulent.
"When new information cast doubt on the documents, we conducted an extensive investigation of their authenticity which culminated this week in the virtual certainty that they were forged," Monitor editor Paul Van Slambrouck wrote in an editor's note accompanying the Boston-based newspaper's account of its internal investigation of the documents.

On April 25, the Monitor said it had been given documents discovered in the Baghdad house of Qusai Hussein, one of Saddam Hussein's two sons, that showed Saddam's government authorized six payments to Labor lawmaker George Galloway totaling more than $10 million, between July 1992 and last January.

According to the newspaper report, a document in January authorized a check of $3 million in recognition of Galloway's "courageous and daring stands against the enemies of Iraq, like (Tony) Blair, the British prime minister, and for his opposition in the House of Commons and Lords against all outrageous lies against our patient people."

Galloway, a vocal opponent of the war to oust Saddam and a frequent visitor to Iraq before the conflict, repeatedly denied receiving payments from Iraq and called the Monitor report "fantastically untrue."

Similar reports on Galloway allegedly receiving payments from Saddam were carried in The Daily Telegraph in London. As recently as Wednesday,the Telegraph reported that Galloway had confirmed he was in Iraq on the day that documents used by the Telegraph in its reporting showed he met an Iraqi intelligence officer.

"I am not yet in a position to say they (the Telegraph documents) are forgeries, but I am in a position to say they are false," Galloway told the Telegraph.

The Monitor said an initial investigation of the documents it received from a man who identified himself as Gen. Salah Abdel Rasool seemed to confirm their authenticity.

But subsequent ink tests showed that the two documents carrying the oldest dates - 1992 and 1993 - "were actually written within the past few months."

The Monitor said the "newest document - dated 2003 - appears to have been written at approximately the same time."

Galloway has threatened libel suits against both the Telegraph and the Monitor. He was suspended from the Labor Party May 6 while it conducted an internal investigation.

 

[BillyTK]

The Getelarph are claiming that their documents are the real deal though, but seem unwilling to put them to the same tests that the Christian Monitor did. Hmmm...

 

[richardm]

The Getelarph are claiming that their documents are the real deal though, but seem unwilling to put them to the same tests that the Christian Monitor did. Hmmm...

I wonder what the tests were, exactly? Perhaps the Telegraph has reservations about them.

Edited to add: This sort of thing , presumably.

 

[BillyTK]

I wonder what the tests were, exactly? Perhaps the Telegraph has reservations about them.

Edited to add: This sort of thing , presumably.

The test was asking the people who supplied the papers if they'd really found them or had made them up.

Seriously though, it's the ink test, which showed that the Christian Monitor's documents were only a few months old, not the 10 years they were claimed to be.

Edited to add: Yup, that sort of thing!