Final Protective Fire

Thursday, May 26, 2005

If you have been following the Oil-For-Food scandal, you may have noticed that earlier in the month, British MP George Galloway appeared before Norm Coleman's Senate committee to deny that he had benefitted from Saddam's schemes to parse out Oil-For-Food oil revenues. Galloway's appearance was heralded as a success by the media and various Bush administration opponents. They should have known better than to find themselves on the side of an odious character like Galloway.
This blogger shreds Galloway and sets up the evidence for perjury rather well.
One has to wonder at the stupidity of Galloway to think that he could just steamroller over a Senate committee. It may be that Galloway is ignorant of the fact that the US Congress has perfected the method of criminalizing policy disagreements using such testimony ever since the Reagan adminstration and the Iran-Contra scandal. The British Parliament is a forum more likely to be flummoxed by Galloway's act.

Robin 12:23 AM

Comments:

You're forgetting that Galloway could never be called to account before an American court for perjury. He is not an American citizen, does not reside in the U.S., could almost certainly evade any attempt at extradition, and probably could claim some kind of diplomatic status anyway.

He could lie through his teeth to Congress and he knew it.

That this makes a joke of his appearance before Congress was pointed out by a blogger (I think it was Hindraker but I can't remember for sure) well before he testified.

# posted by

Vader : 10:17 AM

I'm not forgetting, Kent.

And while he could probably evade extradition, his lack of citizenship or residency doesn't make him immune.

I'd have to research the diplomatic immunity issue before commenting.

# posted by

Robin : 4:04 PM