[Reader-list] Galloway and the Mother of All Invective

[Vivek Narayanan]

While the US and British governments like to believe they have a common 
affinity against the rest of the world, there are some rather startling 
cultural differences between them...  This article leaves me hoping 
(begging?) for some future confrontation between Laloo Yadav and Capitol 
Hill...

V.

Galloway and the mother of all invective
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/ 
0,,1486417,00.html#article_continue

Galloway and the mother of all invective

Wednesday May 18, 2005
Guardian
Whatever else you made of him, when it came to delivering sustained  
barrages of political invective, you had to salute his  
indefatigability.

George Galloway stormed up to Capitol Hill yesterday morning for the  
confrontation of his career, firing scatter-shot insults at the  
senators who had accused him of profiting illegally from Iraqi oil  
sales.

They were "neo-cons" and "Zionists" and a "pro-war lynch mob", he  
raged, who belonged to a "lickspittle Republican committee" that was  
engaged in creating "the mother of all smokescreens".

Before the hearing began, the Respect MP for Bethnal Green and Bow even  
had some scorn left over to bestow generously upon the pro-war writer  
Christopher Hitchens. "You're a drink-soaked former Trotskyist  
popinjay," Mr Galloway in formed him. "Your hands are shaking. You  
badly need another drink," he added later, ignoring Mr Hitchens's  
questions and staring intently ahead. "And you're a drink-soaked ..."  
Eventually Mr Hitchens gave up. "You're a real thug, aren't you?" he  
hissed, stalking away.

It was a hint of what was to come: not so much political theatre as  
political bloodsports - and with the senators, at least, it was Mr  
Galloway who emerged with the flesh between his teeth.

"I know that standards have slipped in Washington in recent years, but  
for a lawyer, you're remarkably cavalier with any idea of justice," he  
told Norm Coleman, the Minnesota Republican who chairs the senate  
investigations committee, after taking his seat at the front of the  
high-ceilinged hearing room, and swearing an oath to tell the truth.

"I'm here today, but last week you already found me guilty. You  
traduced my name around the world without ever having asked me a single  
question."

The culture clash between Mr Galloway's bruising style and the  
soporific gentility of senate proceedings could hardly have been more  
pronounced, and drew audible gasps and laughs of disbelief from the  
audience. "I met Saddam Hussein exactly the same number of times as  
Donald Rumsfeld met him," Mr Galloway went on. "The difference is that  
Donald Rumsfeld met him to sell him guns, and to give him maps the  
better to target those guns."

American reporters seemed as fascinated as the British media: at one  
point yesterday, before it was his turn to speak, Mr Galloway strode  
from the room, sending journalists of all nationalities rushing after  
him - only to discover that he was going to the lavatory.

By condemning him in their report without interviewing him, the  
senators had already given Mr Galloway the upper hand. But not  
everything was in his favour. For a start, only two senators were  
present, sabotaging Mr Galloway's efforts to attack the whole  
lickspittle lot of them - and one of the two, the Democrat Carl Levin,  
had spent much of his opening statement attacking the hypocrisy of the  
US government in allegedly allowing American firms to benefit from  
Iraqi oil corruption.

Even so, Mr Galloway was in his element, playing the role he relishes  
the most: the little guy squaring up for a fight with the  
establishment.

For these purposes, Senator Coleman served symbolically to represent  
all the evil in the world - the entire Republican party, the conscience  
of George Bush, the US government and the British government, too: no  
wonder his weak smile looked so nauseous.

"I gave my heart and soul to stop you committing the disaster that you  
did commit in invading Iraq ... senator, in everything I said about  
Iraq, I turned out to be right and you turned out to be wrong," Mr  
Galloway told him.

And yet for all his anti-establishment credentials, Mr Galloway is as  
practised as any of his New Labour enemies at squirming away from  
awkward questions. Under scrutiny by Senator Levin, he deployed a  
classic example of the bait-and-switch technique that is the government  
minister's best defence in difficult questioning.

But Mr Galloway Goes To Washington had never really been an exercise in  
clarifying the facts. It was an exercise in giving Norm Coleman, and,  
by extension, the Bush administration, a black eye - mere days after  
the bloody nose that the Respect MP took credit for having given Tony  
Blair. And it went as well as Mr Galloway could have wished.