OK...on one side of the Atlantic is a right wing US administration. On the other side of the Atlantic is a left wing loose cannon MP with a major following in the anti-war scene. They've already directly battled once before and now it seems like both sides are up for a rematch
DING DING ROUND 2?
In one corner is George Galloway, sole MP for the British NRNLW(No RESPECT for Non-Left Wingers) party, firmly part of the hardcore socialist "old Labour" crowd(till he quit Tony Blair's Labour party). Primarily got elected due to his anti-Iraq war noisemaking(how good he is at anything unrelated to the Iraq war is unknown), the fact that such a guy can even get elected on such slim grounds is cause for eye-rolling.
In the other corner is primarily George W Bush and secondarily the US Republican party. I've said enough about Bush in my earlier articles.
As you'd suspect, there are a variety of reason that these two men would want to pick a fight with each other. The main official reason at the moment is that Galloway is suspected of oil trading with Saddam Hussein, under the cover of a cancer charity he runs called the Miriam Appeal. Galloway denies all of these charges.
Bottom line for me is that I don't like George W Bush and I don't like George Galloway, reason being, that one's a hard-core US right winger who doesn't care about the rest of the world, the other's a hard-core UK left winger who has a reckless disrespect for mainstream US politics in general, and I'm a centrist liberal who didn't even get into current affairs till after 9/11. I feel no need to support, trust or show favour to either player. If the two parties can knock lumps out of each other without anyone in between getting caught in the middle, I'll just put my feet up with a pizza and beer and watch the fight(figuratively speaking).
Which was pretty much what happened during round 1, back in May when Galloway was called to DC by a Congress committee led by the Republican Senator Norm Coleman. Galloway arrived in the US in a bullish mood and credit where credit's due, the commitee was certainly unable to land any solid blows on him. For his part, Galloway mainly refought the "should we have gone to war in Iraq" debate, pretty much teaching anyone who didn't back the Iraq war how to suck eggs.
Still, a points win to Galloway in round 1, and he went on to become a cult hero to the hardcore pacifists and socialists Stateside. However the charges against him were certainly plausable given that he had previously admitted to rooting for the Saddam Hussein regime against the US and UK in the run up to the Iraq war, OK, so the US backed Saddam during the 1980s against Iran but Galloway certainly can't claim the moral high ground against Bush and the 'neocons' given those circumstances. And now Coleman seems to have come accross more intel, specifically that someone stuck US$600000(about £338K) in the bank account of Galloway's now ex-wife, possibly through suspected Jordanian middleman Farwaz Zureikat.
There's a significant hole in that theory though, Zureikat may have done deals with Saddam and theoretically he could have transferred funds from Saddam's coffers to the Miriam Appeal and Galloway may simply not have cared about the details. However that does not explain why no one Stateside seems to be that bothered that Zureikat is still doing business deals Stateside while the US government continues to hammer Galloway.
Galloway did call the original hearing in May "the mother of all smokescreens" and given how things are looking right now, I have to wonder whether Coleman is under orders from Bush to provide a smokescreen on this occassion at least. The President has certainly enough reasons to feel the need for one.
Bush's crew is getting hammered right now and the reasons they're getting hammered are very much to do with the Iraq war. Rewind to 2003. Joeseph Wilson, ex-US ambassador to various African countries was hired by the CIA for a one-off assignment, head to Niger to look for evidence of the sale of "uranium yellowcake"(radioactive matierial) from Niger to Iraq. Wilson came up empty. Bush still went on to use the "yellowcake story" as part of the evidence for going to war. Wilson called him on it in the press...and not long after, his wife Valerie,a solid CIA agent, got her cover blown.
A couple of years down the line and an independent investigation's being made by Judge Patrick Fitzgerald concerning the events of 2003. So far it's been found that the original evidence connecting Niger to Iraq was forged and that there's a very definate possibility that Valerie Wilson's cover was deliberately blown by a combination of Karl Rove(Dubya's main political advisor and long time dirty tricks man) and "Scooter" Libby(strategist for VP Dick Cheney).
The day this article got put online, Libby was indicted on charges of perjury and obstruction of justice, Rove's still under investigation and Libby's trial could result in that just being for starters. Bringing up Watergate may sound like an exaggerated cliche right now but given that even some Republicans are starting to distance themselves from the 'neocons', could this finally be the tidal wave that rips the current administration to pieces?
And if Bush is targetting Galloway through Coleman as a smokescreen to distract people from the Wilson investigation, how far will it extend to? Currently the investigation into the left wing MP is being joined on both sides of the Atlantic and Galloway's willing to have a day in court to contest perjury charges, and if we're talking smokescreen then that's one thing the Republicans cannot afford. Galloway called them on the dodgy evidence for war last time out, he's easily smart enough to bring up Wilson in any future bouts, and that will certainly result in a TKO if the evidence against Galloway isn't water and airtight.
However, I wouldn't put all the money in my pocket on the smokescreen theory. For starters the invesigation commitee is "bipartisan" aka it has both Republicans and Democrats on it and while the likes of Galloway may not be able to tell the difference between Republicans and Democrats, any realist should work out that the Democrats are likely going to be the main group to benefit should the Bush administration crumble. Therefore there's no way they'd let themselves be used in any Republican smokescreen, assuming they could sniff it out.
That assumption could well be an ass-u-me though. However, someone certainly put the money in Galloway's ex-wife's bank account, and though it might have been the CIA on the sly, I wouldn't put it past someone like Galloway to be doing deals with Saddam, just before his regime fell - I'm not sure there ever was a time when his political career wasn't reliant on mudslinging at the US political establishment.
Get a pizza and beer over here and let's see what happens.
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