Shock indeed was the reaction of the US Senate, especially Sen. Norm Coleman, chairman of the Senate’s Subcommittee on Investigation, in particular when British left-wing MP George Galloway appeared before them on Tuesday to answer charges that he had benefited from kickbacks as part of Saddam Hussein’s manipulations of the UN’s Food for Oil program. The British legislator defended himself by launching a ferocious attack upon US Iraq policy in witheringly uncompromising terms; he asserted that the Americans had let both their standards of justice and the quality of their intelligence slip woefully in recent years.
Yesterday the US press and media were still reeling at the virtuoso performance of this tough British street fighter while according all honors to Galloway. Rarely have mighty senators been treated with such disdain by any witness appearing before them and more rarely still has any such witness been allowed to get away with such aggression. Because Chairman Coleman was accompanied by only one other subcommittee member out of the 13 who could have been present, the odds swung decisively in the Briton’s favor. Neither US legislator had an adequate put down for the witness and as a result he turned the tables decisively.
Galloway was able to trumpet a series of uncomfortable truths about the Iraq war that his investigators did not want to hear and clearly did not like. Having successfully sued the Christian Science Monitor and Daily Telegraph in London over pretty much the same allegations — that a charity he ran for Iraqi children had been a front for payola from Saddam’s regime — Galloway was unlikely to be in any mood for compromise on Tuesday.
The best Chairman Coleman could come up with was the protest that Galloway had not answered all the questions to his committee’s satisfaction and he warned of serious consequences if it were later discovered that he had been lying under oath. Not much of a result for what was supposed to be a penetrating grilling of a hostile witness.
This very public debacle once again undermines US judgment and intelligence at a time when clarity is needed to investigate what certainly was widespread abuse of the oil for food program. Besides Galloway, the Senate has accused a number of important Russians, including the controversial nationalist politician Vladimir Zhirinovsky along with former French Prime Minister Charles Pasqua of being involved in Iraqi kickbacks. By failing to come up with convincing proof of the allegations against George Galloway, and being shown up badly in the process, the senators have weakened their whole investigation. It may thus be even harder to pinpoint wrongdoing where it actually did occur.
When it comes to Iraq, America seems determined to stumble from one blunder to the next, getting their facts wrong with alarming regularity. Americans say they are quick learners — and maybe they really are. If they are, it is a good time to make another try now.
