Galloway Rips into Senate Committee

George Galloway, Bethnal Green and Bow MP, came to Washington to respond to accusations that he has profited from the "oil for food" scandal. But rather than merely refute the evidence brought against him, he used the opportunity to turn the tables on his accusers and point out their own perfidities:

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.

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. Senator, this is the mother of all smokescreens. You are trying to divert attention from the crimes that you supported, from the theft of billions of dollars of Iraq's wealth.

Have a look at the real Oil-for-Food scandal. Have a look at the 14 months you were in charge of Baghdad, the first 14 months when $8.8 billion of Iraq's wealth went missing on your watch. Have a look at Halliburton and other American corporations that stole not only Iraq's money, but the money of the American taxpayer.

Complete text is on The Daily Kos -- go read it.

Man, you gotta love a guy like that. And apparently he's not considered all that much of a firebrand back home, from the way the BBC World Service was talking about him tonight on their broadcast. As Tom Tomorrow said, you only wish more of our own politicians would grow some balls and talk this way. Anyone talking any bets on how much of this you get to hear on American news programs?