Scott Ritter: Three Cheers for George Galloway! ( In the belly of the beast)

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" Zepp " <zepp

Sat, 21 May 2005 06:00:17 -0700

[Zepps_News] Scott Ritter: Three Cheers for George Galloway!

 

 

 

 

<http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,1489174,00.html>

 

In the belly of the beast

 

Scott Ritter

Saturday May 21, 2005

The Guardian

 

In the recent parliamentary elections, the British people, given the

choice between standing for the rule of law or embracing partisan

politics, chose the latter, voting with their pocketbooks, even though

it meant re-electing a man who led Britain into an illegal war of

aggression, based on lies and misrepresentation of fact.

 

Tony Blair is a man who has shown himself more subservient to an

American president with empire in his eyes than to a British tradition

of respect for the rule of law that dates back to the Magna Carta. There

is at least one politician, however, that the citizens of Britain can

today be proud of, regardless of how one views his politics. This is a

man who, back in 2002, had the courage to stand up to Blair and George

Bush, calling Blair a liar and declaring that both were behaving like

" wolves " towards Iraq. For speaking the truth, he was castigated, thrown

out of the Labour party and smeared with false allegations of corruption

- at the same time as the US government hid its role in enriching Saddam

Hussein's government with illegal kickbacks. He has now charged back,

winning a parliamentary seat previously controlled by the very party

that evicted him.

 

And now the same man has done something that no other British politician

has been brave enough to do: cross the Atlantic and confront the United

States over the lies spread about the reasons for war with Iraq, the oil

for food agreement and the failure of US lawmakers to do their own job

when it comes to the rule of law.

 

George Galloway, the politician in question, stared down the US Senate

subcommittee on homeland security and government affairs, and its

notoriously partisan chairman Norm Coleman, and blasted as totally

unfounded the committee's allegations that he had profited from oil

vouchers in exchange for his anti-war stance. He emerged from the

hearing victorious. If only more politicians, British and American

alike, were able to display such courage in the face of the atmosphere

of neoconservative intimidation prevalent in Washington these days.

 

Galloway is now the darling of the American left, and has fed punch

lines for late-night comics and generated headlines like the New York

Post's " Brit fries senators in oil " . But mainstream America still seems

unable to digest the horrific reality that the MP's testimony

underscored: that Senator Coleman's McCarthy-like hearings are but a

smoke screen for a crime of horrific proportions.

 

Galloway has nevertheless had the courage to stand up to unjust charges

and an unjust war - and that is the only way that opinion will shift.

Two years ago I wrote that the accusations of corruption against

Galloway were too convenient, designed to silence one of the Iraq war's

harshest critics. The honourable member for Bethnal Green and Bow has

entered the lair of a conservative American political body to confront

it head-on about a war and occupation that many on both sides of the

Atlantic, politicians and public alike, seem only too willing to sweep

under the carpet. So, Mr Galloway, please accept from this American

three cheers for a job well done.

 

· Scott Ritter was a senior UN weapons inspector in Iraq between 1991

and 1998; his new book, Iraq Confidential: The Untold Story of America's

Intelligence Conspiracy, will be published this summer

 

WSRitter

 

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