G
gilliam
Guest
The Daily Ablution has been Liveblogging the Galloway hearings.
“11:53 - Sen. Coleman is establishing links between Zaraqat and Galloway, which are not being contested.”
Plus this useful observation:
There’s a slightly different focus coming from Chairman Coleman and his Democratic counterpart, but it’s clear that they’re on the same page as far as Galloway is concerned. That’s very good to see, in that it undermines George’s ad hominem attacks on the committee members (“a group of Christian fundamentalist and Zionist activists under the chairmanship of a neocon George Bush who is pro-war” as today’s Times has him saying). In fact, that characterisation has been completely shot down.
12:24 post mortem - One of his most important claims was that the documentation here covered the same time period as those addressed in the Telegraph libel case (the authenticity of which, incidentally, was never called into question in court). You can bet that the “schoolboy howler” will get a lot of coverage in the sympathetic wing of the press.
As we saw here, Galloway’s claim is false. I wrote:
"As a Guardian story covering Mr. Galloway’s libel win informs us:
*"The next day, [the Telegraph reporter] found a letter from deputy prime minister Tariq Aziz to four cabinet ministers, supposedly circulating Mr Galloway’s ‘work programme’ for 2000. *
*"A little later he came to a five-page memorandum dated January 3 2000 which had Iraqi Intelligence Service in its letterhead and which related to the Mariam Campaign. *
“He was ‘completely satisfied’ that the documents were genuine. [Telegraph reporter] Blair said the intelligence memo said Mr Galloway had received money for the Mariam campaign in secret, it had been diverted from the oil for food campaign and that the intelligence service had some role in it.”
"So the documents that formed the basis of the Telegraph story - which have not been proven forgeries, as commenters reminded us yesterday - come from 2000, while the Senate panel’s report notes:
“The first allocation for which the Subcommittee has documentary evidence of Galloway’s involvement took place in 2001.”
The committee did make a mistake, confusing the documents from the Telegraph and Christian Science Monitor, but that’s not really relevant to these accusations.
“11:53 - Sen. Coleman is establishing links between Zaraqat and Galloway, which are not being contested.”
Plus this useful observation:
There’s a slightly different focus coming from Chairman Coleman and his Democratic counterpart, but it’s clear that they’re on the same page as far as Galloway is concerned. That’s very good to see, in that it undermines George’s ad hominem attacks on the committee members (“a group of Christian fundamentalist and Zionist activists under the chairmanship of a neocon George Bush who is pro-war” as today’s Times has him saying). In fact, that characterisation has been completely shot down.
12:24 post mortem - One of his most important claims was that the documentation here covered the same time period as those addressed in the Telegraph libel case (the authenticity of which, incidentally, was never called into question in court). You can bet that the “schoolboy howler” will get a lot of coverage in the sympathetic wing of the press.
As we saw here, Galloway’s claim is false. I wrote:
"As a Guardian story covering Mr. Galloway’s libel win informs us:
*"The next day, [the Telegraph reporter] found a letter from deputy prime minister Tariq Aziz to four cabinet ministers, supposedly circulating Mr Galloway’s ‘work programme’ for 2000. *
*"A little later he came to a five-page memorandum dated January 3 2000 which had Iraqi Intelligence Service in its letterhead and which related to the Mariam Campaign. *
“He was ‘completely satisfied’ that the documents were genuine. [Telegraph reporter] Blair said the intelligence memo said Mr Galloway had received money for the Mariam campaign in secret, it had been diverted from the oil for food campaign and that the intelligence service had some role in it.”
"So the documents that formed the basis of the Telegraph story - which have not been proven forgeries, as commenters reminded us yesterday - come from 2000, while the Senate panel’s report notes:
“The first allocation for which the Subcommittee has documentary evidence of Galloway’s involvement took place in 2001.”
The committee did make a mistake, confusing the documents from the Telegraph and Christian Science Monitor, but that’s not really relevant to these accusations.
