I urge everyone to please read this excellent transcript.
George Galloway puts the U.S. in its place, regarding Iraq; here are some notable quotes from Mr. Galloway:
Now I know that standards have slipped in the last few years in Washington, but for a lawyer you are remarkably cavalier with any idea of justice. I am here today but last week you already found me guilty. You traduced my name around the world without ever having asked me a single question, without ever having contacted me, without ever written to me or telephoned me, without any attempt to contact me whatsoever. And you call that justice.
I have had two meetings with Saddam Hussein, once in 1994 and once in August of 2002. By no stretch of the English language can that be described as “many meetings” with Saddam Hussein.
As a matter of fact, I have met Saddam Hussein exactly the same number of times as Donald Rumsfeld met him. The difference is Donald Rumsfeld met him to sell him guns and to give him maps the better to target those guns. I met him to try and bring about an end to sanctions, suffering and war, and on the second of the two occasions, I met him to try and persuade him to let Dr Hans Blix and the United Nations weapons inspectors back into the country - a rather better use of two meetings with Saddam Hussein than your own Secretary of State for Defense made of his.
I was an opponent of Saddam Hussein when British and Americans governments and businessmen were selling him guns and gas. I used to demonstrate outside the Iraqi embassy when British and American officials were going in and doing commerce.
You will see from the official parliamentary record, Hansard, from the 15th March 1990 onwards, voluminous evidence that I have a rather better record of opposition to Saddam Hussein than you do and than any other member of the British or American governments do.
Now, Senator, I gave my heart and soul to oppose the policy that you promoted. I gave my political life’s blood to try to stop the mass killing of Iraqis by the sanctions on Iraq which killed one million Iraqis, most of them children, most of them died before they even knew that they were Iraqis, but they died for no other reason other than that they were Iraqis with the misfortune to born at that time. I gave my heart and soul to stop you committing the disaster that you did commit in invading Iraq. And I told the world that your case for the war was a pack of lies.
I told the world that Iraq, contrary to your claims did not have weapons of mass destruction. I told the world, contrary to your claims, that Iraq had no connection to al-Qaeda. I told the world, contrary to your claims, that Iraq had no connection to the atrocity on 9/11 2001. I told the world, contrary to your claims, that the Iraqi people would resist a British and American invasion of their country and that the fall of Baghdad would not be the beginning of the end, but merely the end of the beginning.
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; 1600 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.
17 Comments
Here’s a long article from a fellow socialist who has some misgivings about the sincerity Galloway’s senate appearance:
http://tinyurl.com/d3d38
Great you bring this up when you know Dave Z is starting to comment again. Maybe, Dave can change this topic to videoconferencing too.
Joost bastin you”R ballz DavEE
Funnily enough, the Senate website has the wrong URL for the archived video of the hearing.
Galloway had to much Gallo ( wine ).
The aliens took him on a ride, good thing he had his Nikes tied tight or he might not come back.
I think my favorite Kool aid flavor is orange.
Well, I won’t defend Galloway as a great guy by any means, but the portions of his testimony that I quoted above certainly resonate with me.
I liked how he pointed out the utter hypocrisy of the United States in bringing charges against people for cooperating with Saddam the “evil dictator”, when Saddam got his start because of us, and we were happy to shake his hand and provide him with WMDs when he was doing the dirty work for us (against Iran).
I can also identify with the part where he said “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”. I remember back before the invasion having several discussions with people who supported the administration’s stance. I said over and over again (to the point that people were sick of me talking about it) that we did not have the evidence that the administration claimed (”leaves no doubt”, etc.). My right wing friends (and family) assured me that our government would never lie to us like that. They were confident that we did have the evidence, and that we just couldn’t show it because we were protecting sources, etc. but that in time, that the administration’s claims would be vindicated. “Just wait and see”, they said. Well, now we’ve waited and seen and it turns out that those of us who objected were proven correct, albeit much too late.
The said part is that it doesn’t do any good for me to rub it in their faces and say “I told you so”. Primarily, because that wouldn’t bring back the tens of thousands who have lost their lives because of those lies, and secondarily because most of them (in a sudden onset of blindness to historical revisionism) now are of the opinion that it doesn’t matter whether the WMDs were there or not, and we had other reasons for going in.
I guess some people don’t mind when their government perpetrates lies that result in immoral wars, and I just don’t know how to process that. I have written about it at length on this blog, and it just doesn’t seem to bother people. They will cling to their political or patriotic affiliations so tightly that they will refuse to admit that what their country did was wrong. They will change the subject and try to attack someone in a different political party, or otherwise avoid addressing the real issue.
As more and more injustice comes to light, whether it’s prison torture or shooting unarmed old men, they will be satisfied with letting a peon level fall guy or two take the blame, and pretend that those incidents are isolated and not condoned at a higher level. I wonder if this kind of thing went on with the German people in the WW2 era.
i want to believe that no one lied, per say. they did what they felt was the right choice at the time: exadurated evidence to draw conclusions that weren’t there. why? because everyone wants a bad guy? i dunno…
To me, exaggerating evidence (or as in some cases making it up) is lying. Sure, I’d love to believe that no one lied as well; I certainly don’t have any kind of personal desire to bad mouth the president or the administration for any reason.
But, when they repeatedly say “we have evidence that leaves no doubt” (direct quote) about something that turns out to be completely false, I can come to no other conclusion than that is an outright lie. They didn’t say “we think” or “we suspect”. I believe they also used the phrase “based on our best intelligence”, which is another lie, since all intelligence contradicting our assumptions was summarily dismissed.
It’s not like this was just a simple mistake on our part, in good faith. When you had people around the world strongly questioning the validity of our claims, with good reason, it behooves us to take that seriously, and not arrogantly dismiss their doubt as “un-American”. The administration steadfastly insisted that they were correct, in the face of honest and reasonable challenges to their claims; that isn’t just an intelligence “oversight” or slip up.
There was compelling evidence against the case we were making, and we chose to ignore it. Just look at the continually growing line of people within (or formerly within) the government intelligence circles who tried to present the evidence at the time that contradicted their case, and time after time were ignored.
It’s at best deliberately refusing to look at the issue honestly, and at worst just completely fabricating evidence to support a predetermined decision.
JB what is your favorite flavor of Kool Aid?
Dont get all excited, I didn’t read your posts as I dont have enough time.
Where is all the decrying of clinton’s fake war with kosovo when he and monica were in the 0ral office?
wag the dog is what it is…
how about the massive chinese in africa?
How about the UN Oil for food scam outcry? you have to be angry about that ripoff, that involves many poor people who are hungry, while the bsers were talking the big game they lined their pockets, why no intense demand of investigation of Kofi and his son( the Newest Billionaire - the poor kid from africa strikes it rich ).
The outcry selection, especially in the media in the us smacks so much of hypocracy.
I think we went in to Irag with the best info we had at the time. Including the backing of the UN resolutions, until France and Germany wanted to cover their buns due the Fact they were doing brisk business with Sssssadam.
I will comment on tech or other.
That is all I am out of here on the politico bickering, so you will have the last word on this JB - have fun.
Dave, thanks for illustrating my points I made in the previous comment.
A laundry list of other things which I would also agree are bad doesn’t in any way negate my original point, which is that what we’ve done and are doing now is bad. You are pulling the same old stuff, trying to change the subject and point the finger elsewhere instead of addressing the issue. That’s like if we’re walking down the street and I see someone beating the crap out of someone else, and yell out for them to stop, and you then telling me to shut up, because someone got beat up on that same corner last week and the week before.
As for “going into Iraq with the best info we had at the time”, that has been proven to be incorrect, as I elaborated on in my previous comment; since you admit that you didn’t read it, it doesn’t seem to be very logical to post a reply to something you haven’t read. Intelligence officials presented evidence against our case and they were ignored and told to find what the administration wanted them to find.
Sure, there are lots of other secondary reasons for going in that the administration has promoted (after the fact) to being primary reasons - none of which would have sealed the deal (with congress nor the American people) at the time, and the administration knew it, which is why they needed the scare tactic WMD story.
One such secondary reason often cited is the UN resolutions. Our selective enforcement of UN resolutions is probably a big enough subject for it’s own post, but suffice it to say that the evidence definitely points towards extreme prejudice in our choice of who we invade over violations of U.N. resolutions. Not to mention the hypocrisy of ignoring most U.N. member states’ opinion on the matter of our invasion, while at the same time conveniently claiming to be carrying out the invasion for the sake of enforcing their resolution.
In addition, despite U.S. efforts to veto almost every U.N. resolution against Israel, who also stockpiles WMDs and abuses and persecutes whole sections of their society, Israel has still somehow managed to get many U.N. sanctions against their internationally recognized bad behavior. Why is the U.S. not adamantly enforcing international law in this case, if you claim that it is right for us to do so in Iraq?
“I told the world, contrary to your claims, that Iraq had no connection to al-Qaeda”
http://tinyurl.com/cven8
That article describes a very loose “relationship”, if it could even be called that, and certainly not a direct one to Saddam. The only thing that they state for sure is that al Qaeda members were (at some point in time) in the country of Iraq. Guess what, they were in the US too; according to the “official” story, they took flying lessons at US schools. Does that mean we “sponsored” al Qaeda?
I’m not suggesting that it was the same type of situation, just illustrating that it’s not a black and white issue. Even if they knowingly allowed them to be in their country, it still doesn’t mean they had anything to do with the 9/11 attacks. Don’t forget that we had a hand in arming and working with both bin Laden and Saddam when it suited us (as puppets to fight against the Soviets and Iran, respectively). As I’ve said before, does that make us an accomplice to what they did later, since we helped them become who they are now?
You can’t have it both ways. If Iraq is to accept blame for at some point in the past being friendly with al Qaeda, then the US must accept the same level of blame maintaining a much more active relationship (including providing arms) to both bin Laden and Saddam.
It is becoming increasingly clear that Iraq had a working relationship with al-Queada. More information is sure to come out as the Iraqi secret police documents are translated.
As I said above, even if they did, that (#1) still doesn’t justify our invasion, and (#2) doesn’t diminsih the fact that WE also had such a relationship with both parties in question at one point.
Not that I really want to talk about it (I can’t help myself), but do you know the details of the U.S/Iraiqi relationship before Saddam invaded Kuwati?
I think that should be “U.S.” “Iraqi” and “Kuwait”. Yes! Another comment?
I don’t recall the details of the timeline, but I could do some research to look into it. I do know that the US supported Iraq (at least in the form of agricultural credits worth millions) until immediately before his invasion.
Here are some brief snippets gathered from initial searching:
1989
1990
I can’t rely much on memory, since I wasn’t paying much attention to this kind of thing at the time, but there appears to be evidence that we were supporting him to some degree right up until the invasion.
My point is primarily that we were involved with supporting Saddam and Iraq during the period when they *were* actually employing chemical weapons, and ironically enough then turned around 20 years later and invaded them on an accusation of the same, which by this point was false.
The infamous and often referenced Halabja attacks, in which Saddam viciously used chemical weapons on his own people, occurred in 1988, after which we continued to support, supply, and fund him for two years. Now we come back and point to that act as evidence of his being an “imminent threat”. If he is a terrorist for doing this, then what does that make us (by the administration’s own standards) for supporting him?
More info: (on earlier relations)
http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB82/
To Dave Z (may 25, 2005 at 2:10 pm):
“. . .we went in to Iraq with the best info we had at the time.” THE BEST INFO? What do you mean by that, praytell? Shortly before the US invaded Iraq, the UN uncovered crude forgeries used by the Bush administration to justify its immoral and unjust war. Did these forgeries give the Bush administration or the US Congress any pause? Hardly! The administration had to hurry up and attack, before its case totally unraveled. For the warmongering Bush administration to use the greatest military power in the world to attack an impoverished and disarmed third world country on false pretenses is the ultimate betrayal of any kind of trust.