Bad News for "Gorgeous George"

Last week, after winning election to Britain's Parliament, pro-Saddam demagogue George Galloway vowed to see Tony Blair brought to trial as a war criminal. Today brings news that Galloway is the one who belongs behind bars:

In findings being released today, the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs permanent subcommittee on investigations charges that former French Interior Minister Charles Pasqua and British Member of Parliament George Galloway each received the right to market more than 10 million barrels of cut-rate oil from dictator Saddam's Oil Ministry between 1999 and 2003.

Senate investigators, who will air their findings in a hearing next week, based the new report on internal Iraqi documents, Oil Ministry correspondence and interviews with top Saddam-era officials such as detained Vice President Taha Yassin Ramadan.


Charges that Galloway was on Saddam's payroll are nothing new. This time, however, it looks like the evidence against "Gorgeous George" is overwhelming:

Mr. Galloway, one of British Prime Minister Tony Blair's more ferocious critics over the Iraq war, quit the Labor Party and won an upset victory over a Blair supporter for a seat in Parliament in the May 5 election.

The British lawmaker last year won judgments against the London Daily Telegraph and the Christian Science Monitor after they ran stories relying on forged Iraqi Foreign Ministry documents that Mr. Galloway had been paid directly by Saddam Hussein in the early 1990s.

"I have never seen a barrel of oil, never owned one, never bought one, never sold one," Mr. Galloway insisted in a 2003 interview.

But Senate investigators say they based their findings on different documents from the Iraqi Oil Ministry files and from direct testimony from Saddam aides.

[...]

Based again on Iraqi Oil Ministry documents and interviews with senior Saddam aids, the subcommittee said Mr. Galloway received allocations for 20 million barrels -- with a resale value of up to $6 million -- between June 2000 and June 2003.

The report reveals that a senior Iraqi official under Saddam told U.S. investigators last year that "Galloway used a foreign company to broker the sale of the oil allowances. The name of the company was Middle East Semiconducting Co."


It wasn't enough for Galloway merely to act as the mouthpiece of a genocidal monster. Not only did he shill for Saddam, but he earned a tidy sum in the process. There is nothing more I can say about George Galloway that is appropriate for a public forum.