Galloway challenges war lies

On May 17, British MP George Galloway appeared before hearings held by the Senate Permanent Sub-Committee on Investigations on charges of corruption in the Iraq oil-for-food program.

After demolishing allegations against him, Galloway lit into subcommittee chair Republican Sen. Norm Coleman and the Bush administration. Excerpts follow.

“Now, Senator, I gave my heart and soul to oppose the policy that you promoted …

“I told the world that Iraq, contrary to your claims, did not have weapons of mass destruction … that Iraq had no connection to al-Qaeda … that Iraq had no connection to the atrocity on 9/11/2001.

“Senator, in everything I said about Iraq, I turned out to be right and you turned out to be wrong and 100,000 people 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.

“If the world had listened to Kofi Annan, whose dismissal you demanded, if the world had listened to President Chirac who you want to paint as some kind of corrupt traitor, if the world had listened to me and the anti-war movement in Britain, we would not be in the disaster that we are in today.

“Have a look at the real scandal breaking in the newspapers today, revealed in the earlier testimony in this committee. The real sanctions busters were your own companies with the connivance of your own government.”