Commentary On Hitchens' Article.

The article is worth reading as those leftists are making Galloway a saint. In the article contains good material on which to base anti-Galloway arguments.

The main question many ask is was Galloway on the take. The Hithens' article does not take a strong position on that point. In fact, the impression I get is Mr. Hitchens does not believe that to be the case, that is Galloway's love of Saddam and the terrorist is simply reactionary anti-Americanism. In the piece I quote below Mr. Hitchens discusses the alliance of the Iraqi Communists and Saddam's Baath party. Eventually the Communists came to regret the alliance:

The consequence of this, in Britain, was the setting-up of a group named CARDRI: the Campaign Against Repression and for Democratic Rights in Iraq. Many democratic socialists and liberals supported this organization, but there was no doubting that its letterhead and its active staff were Communist volunteers. And Galloway joined it. At the time, it is at least half true to say, the United States distinctly preferred Saddam's Iraq to Khomeini's Iran, and acted accordingly. Thus a leftist could attack Saddam for being, among other things, an American client. We ought not to forget the shame of American policy at that time, because the preference for Saddam outlived the war with Iran, and continued into the postwar Anfal campaign to exterminate the Kurds. In today's "antiwar" movement, you may still hear the echoes of that filthy compromise, in the pseudo-ironic jibe that "we" used to be Saddam's ally.



But mark the sequel. It must have been in full knowledge, then, of that repression, and that genocide, and of the invasion of Kuwait and all that ensued from it, that George Galloway shifted his position and became an outright partisan of the Iraqi Baath. There can be only two explanations for this, and they do not by any means exclude one another. The first explanation, which would apply to many leftists of different stripes, is that anti-Americanism simply trumps everything, and that once Saddam Hussein became an official enemy of Washington the whole case was altered. Given what Galloway has said at other times, in defense of Slobodan Milosevic for example, it is fair to assume that he would have taken such a position for nothing: without, in other words, the hope of remuneration.

Source: Christopher Hitchens in The Weekly Standard - Unmitigated Galloway page 2

This argument is one we have all come to know all too well. The fact that Saddam was once an ally of convenience and then of inertia is not reason to be forever supportive of Saddam.

The case Hitchens makes is the stain of serious impropriety stains a close associate of Galloway's and there very likely was financial hanky-panky going on with Galloway's Mariam Fund charity.

I am of the mind this is more the case than anything. I have no doubt that Galloway's name pops up over and over again in official Baathist documents. I have little doubt Galloway abused the Mariam charity and I have little doubt Galloway's friend Fawaz Zureikat is guilty of oil-for-food abuses. I have no doubt that George Galloway would be screaming for Saddam's ouster if we were supporting his government.

The best case of Galloway benefiting financially from the oil-for-food scandal is that Galloway has an unparalleled skill at being uninformed about shady dealings under his nose.

On the whole I am disappointed that there is not much discussion of Galloway in the blogosphere. Perhaps, many people think if ignored he will simply go away. The time to ignore that stuffed suit disappeared when Norm Coleman's committee made the mistake of inviting him to testify.