MORE ON GALLOWAY….I imagine that, like me, most of my readers know nothing about George Galloway beyond the current allegations that he received $10 million in payments from Saddam Hussein. So I thought I’d share a couple of emails I received about the subject. Here’s the first:
You can be excused for not having followed Galloway’s career over the past ten years.
He did not get the moniker “the member for Baghdad Central” in the British parliament for nothing, and he did not get it overnight. Parliament is actually (and necessarily) very tolerant of eccentrics. He continually over a decade, stridently and it has to be said on occasion eloquently pushed for the lifting of sanctions, campaigning against them on the basis of human rights abuses he claimed they caused in Iraq.
This was what Saddam wanted above all else. It provided him with cover amongst the only section of Western democratic opinion he could look to influence (the credulous left).
Given that at the very last the policy of supporting the war very nearly brought down the UK Labour government and ended Tony Blair’s career, it could hardly be said that Saddam was misguided in valuing Galloway’s activities as highly as he appears to have done. If he paid the money it was a shrewd investment which very nearly paid off.
Then there’s this:
No one has yet suggested that Galloway directed the funds to the anti-war campaign. He apparently misspent funds donated to his charity/political campaign, the Mariam Appeal, but that’s a separate matter from the alleged bribes. The bribes have been said to have gone to his personal wealth. He denies this, though his denials don’t seem to hold water (the newspapers claimed his homes to be worth an immense amount of money, and he responded by claiming that they were worth next to nothing ? reality probably lies somewhere in the middle, and certainly affordable for an MP/columnist).
The idea that bribing a single lunatic backbench MP could have accomplished anything seems idiotic. There was an interview in the Telegraph yesterday, though, with an Anglican minister who had led a number of charity missions to Iraq ? he commented that the Iraqi leaders whom he met seemed to consider Galloway “a propaganda coup,” and ignored his lack of credibility in Britain.
Galloway finally gave some interviews today in which he denied everything, but for some reason I found this paragraph in the latest Telegraph story to be the oddest:
Wearing an ANC sweater, Mr Galloway gave several television and newspaper interviews from the terrace of his farmhouse in Burgau, which overlooks the Atlantic. He refused only one request – to be photographed next to his swimming pool. “Is the Pope a Catholic?” he said.
Why did he not want to photographed next to a swimming pool? And why the weird “Pope/Catholic” response?
