18.05.2005
Imperialism in the dock
Galloway turns the tables on accusers
Storming into the "lion's den" of Capitol Hill on May 17, George Galloway took on, and effectively defeated, his would-be witch-hunters in the Senate permanent subcommittee on investigations - not to mention those in the British media, and elsewhere, who would dearly love to see the indefatigable Respect MP for Bethnal Green and Bow take a terminal fall. Just before his bold Washington assault, Galloway jibed, quite understandably, that "Joseph McCarthy must be smiling admiringly in Hades". This was a reference to how the 13-member committee had last week "traduced" his name throughout the world by repeating the slightly warmed-over smears and allegations - later withdrawn in the libel courts - first presented by Christian Science Monitor and then swiftly by The Daily Telegraph. The charge, then and now, is that Galloway - along with the former French minister, Charles Pasqua - enriched himself thanks to 'oil vouchers' handed over by Saddam Hussein for 'services rendered'. In the case of Galloway, it is claimed that he 'laundered' this money through his children's charity, the Mariam Appeal. Clearly, the Senate subcommittee is out to discredit both Galloway personally and the anti-war movement as a whole. For any genuine anti-imperialist and partisan of the working class, it is surely obligatory to defend Galloway from these latest imperialist-directed attacks, which are an attack on us all in the anti-war left. As Roy Greenslade - a persecutor of Arthur Scargill in his former Daily Mirror days - pointed out, "Galloway has achieved the dubious honour of being the media's new leftwing whipping boy, following in a line that includes Arthur Scargill, Tony Benn and Ken Livingstone" (The Guardian May 13). Under these circumstances we feel obliged to extend our solidarity to Galloway. Of course, the whole senate hearing stinks of double-standards and hypocrisy, as Galloway detailed during his 47-minute counterattack. Thanks to the (admittedly somewhat unsurprising) revelations of a new Senate investigations committee, we now know that the US administration itself turned a blind eye to extensive sanctions-busting in the pre-war sale of Iraqi oil, with US oil companies accounting for some 52% of all the kickbacks paid to the regime in return for sales of cheap oil. More specifically, we discover that the US treasury failed to take action against a Texas oil company, Bayoil, which facilitated payment of at least $37 million in illegal surcharges to the Ba'athist regime. Also, the US military and the state department gave a tacit green light for 'under the counter' shipments of nearly eight million barrels of oil bought by Jordan, a key American ally in the 'war against terrorism'. All these manoeuvres were an obvious violation of the UN-monitored 'oil for food' programme, a diabolical scheme by which Iraq was allowed to sell heavily discounted oil to 'favoured parties' in order to raise money for food and humanitarian supplies. Inevitably, this led to a desperate scramble for these highly lucrative oil contracts, with the Saddam regime demanding - or expecting - kickbacks of 10 to 30 US cents per barrel in return for the much prized oil allocations. Naturally, we communists totally endorse Galloway's apt description of the 'oil for food' programme as "infanticide masquerading as politics". Imperialism presumably thought that imposing a slow death on a country was more civilised than bombing it to smithereens - though, of course, in the end it decided to do both. In a characteristically defiant and bullish performance, Galloway easily tore into the two senators, Norm Coleman (Republican chairman of the panel) and Carl Levin (Democrat), with the other 11 committee wisely deciding to keep out of the fray. Galloway told them that they were engaged in the "mother of all smokescreens" and affirmed right from the start: "I am not now nor have I ever been an oil trader and neither has anyone on my behalf." Obviously relishing his role as the accuser, not the accused, Galloway powerfully denounced the US-UK imperialist war on Iraq and the puppet regime subsequently installed there. As for the subcommittee's report, it was a "schoolboy dossier" and was "full of holes" and "falsehoods" and the sort of "value judgements that are apparently only shared here in Washington". Indeed, one of the companies - Aredio Petroleum - named as having links to Galloway was completely unknown to him until last week. The other company, Middle East Advanced Semiconductors, was owned by Fawaz Zureikat, also chairman of the Mariam Appeal. After being asked several times about Zureikat and his Iraqi business connections, Galloway bluntly retorted: "I can assure you, Mr Zureikat never gave me a penny from an oil deal, a cake deal, a bread deal or from any other deal. He donated money to our campaign, which we publicly brandished on all our literature, along with all the other donors to the campaign." One of Galloway's best punches came when countered the stupid claim that he had met Saddam "many times". In fact, he had met the Iraqi dictator on only two occasions - "the same number of times as US defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld", as Galloway quipped, before adding: "The difference is Donald Rumsfeld met him to sell him guns and maps - the better to target those guns", while "I met him to try to bring about an end to sanctions, suffering and war". Warming to his theme, Galloway delivered his killer blow directly to Coleman: "Senator, in everything I said about Iraq, I turned out to be right and you turned out to be wrong." By any objective standards, Galloway's entire performance at the Senate hearing was impressive - word-perfect, never once reading from prepared notes, for the whole duration he stared directly at his lame and rather amateurish inquisitors. The Guardian felt that the committee put on a "poor and ill-prepared display", and that when it came to "proof of wrongdoing on [Galloway's] own part, there was none" (May 18). Undoubtedly, Galloway's moral and propagandist victory against the Senate subcommittee is a victory for the entire anti-war movement. Galloway has consistently maintained that forged documents have been deployed against him, and dirty tricks like this are more than likely. When the Christian Science Monitor admitted that its source was 'unreliable' (ie, a forgery), the Telegraph immediately pronounced that its own purported 'evidence' came from a different, more reliable source, and hence was more credible, etc. However, the very idea that journalists were able to merrily waltz into a ruined ministry building of a conquered government under the noses of US troops and just innocently stumble upon - by sheer chance, you understand - material listing Galloway as a Saddam flunky is stretching the boundaries of plausibility. This is doubly, so given the Telegraph's longstanding and notorious connections with the British secret services. It is worth noting that the latest issue of Socialist Worker (May 21) contains an 'exclusive' entitled, 'How they forged the case against Galloway', written by Simon Assaf and Charlie Kimber, with assistance from Ann Ashford. This article makes a convincing case that "the central document used against George Galloway this week by the US Senate committee investigating Iraq's oil for food programme is a forgery", and that "the evidence crucial to the alleged case against the Respect MP is fake - created after the fall of Baghdad in 2003". This dodgy document, or list, makes up part of the Duelfer report, penned by the Iraqi Survey Group which went on to declare that Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction. The authors of this piece examine this list - which of course is not the same old Telegraph list - which contains the hundreds of names of individuals and corporations allegedly involved in the 'oil for food' kickbacks. In particular, it subjects to forensic detail the actual entry (also reproduced in the paper) that appeared for Galloway's name, reading that his first mention is found in something called "contract M/09/23", which purports that 1,014 million barrels of oil were allocated to "Mr Fawwaz Zurayqat - Mr George Galloway - Aredio Petroleum (French)". Socialist Worker then advises us: "Look closely at the entry, which is reproduced above. The typeface (font) used for 'Mr George Galloway' is different to the rest of the line. Indeed the only time this font is used in the entire document is where George Galloway's name appears. 'Mr George Galloway' does not line up with the rest of the words in the entry. It is at an angle to the other words. The spacings between 'Mr George Galloway' and the rest of the words are inconsistent. The dash after the words 'Mr George Galloway' touches the following word. The words 'Mr George Galloway' are at a different type density (lighter) than the rest of the line." The comrades conclude from all this that "the most likely explanation is that the words 'Mr George Galloway' have been added after the list was prepared, perhaps stuck on and then photocopied to produce the list in the Duelfer report". We can only but share Socialist Worker's suspicions. But, perhaps even more to the point, even if it turns out that these documents and lists were not after all the deliberate products of a conspiracy, they still serve the useful function of giving us a hint, or preview, of what the ruling class and its agents will throw against us when we start to pose a threat. Naturally communists have many differences with Galloway - not least of all his backward and reactionary social attitudes when it comes to questions like abortion, euthanasia, stem-cell research, drugs, etc. However, as we have pointed out before in these pages, even if Galloway had been taking money from Saddam Hussein - and there does not seem to be a singe shred of serious evidence that he has ever done so - communists would regard it as a comparatively minor sin compared with backing, or being soft on the US-UK Iraq war and the subsequent brutal occupation. We will continue to critically defend Galloway from all imperialist machinations and our call for the immediate and unconditional withdrawal of all imperialist forces will remain firm and strong. Eddie Ford
Worker