Asshole of the week...part three...
http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/005/641kyjkk.asp?pg=2
This weeks asshole is none other than British politician George Galloway, who we recall the other week dressing down the sub-committee on the UN oil for food program who dared to accuse him of, gasp, taking MONEY from the UN (something I am sure hasn't ever been done before) for his own personal gain.
The sound-bite we received was oddly one-sided; we hear Senators timidly responding to Galloways' agressive attack but hear none of the evidence or the questioning. It just didn't make good drama.
Granted, the same Senators convinced of Galloways' wrongdoing might be probing into the lack of a phase four plan on the invasion of Iraq, or for that matter Rice's efforts to build a missile defense system just before the WTC imploded, and the fact that there is an "unamed source" behind the testimony stinks. But a little more information on this character from Hitchens and the picture becomes a lot more clear.
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First of all, and easiest, he had dared to state under oath that he had not been a defender of the Saddam regime. This, from the man who visited Baghdad after the first Gulf war and, addressing Saddam, said: "Sir, I salute your courage, your strength, your indefatigability." How's that for lickspittling? And even if you make allowances for emotional public moments, you can't argue with Galloway's own autobiography, blush-makingly entitled I'm Not the Only One, which was published last spring and from which I offer the following extracts:
The state of Kuwait is "clearly a part of the greater Iraqi whole, stolen from the motherland by perfidious Albion." (Kuwait existed long before Iraq had even been named.) "In my experience none of the Ba'ath leaders have displayed any hostility to Jews." The post-Gulf war massacres of Kurds and Shia in 1991 were part of "a civil war that involved massive violence on both sides." Asked about Saddam's palaces after one of his many fraternal visits, he remarked, "Our own head of state has a fair bit of real estate herself." Her Majesty the Queen and her awful brood may take up a lot of room, but it's hardly comparable to one palace per province, built during a time of famine. Discussing Saddam's direct payments to the families of suicide-murderers--the very question he had refused to answer when I asked him--he once again lapsed into accidental accuracy, as with the Stalin comparison, and said that "as the martyred know, he put Iraq's money where his mouth was." That's true enough: It was indeed Iraq's money, if a bit more than Saddam's mouth.
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As much as I enjoyed Galloways' rejoinder, referring to Hitchens as a "drink-sodden ex-trotskyist poppinjay" and i always suspiciously regard him, as I do myself as suspect when we refer to ourselves as the "authentic left" I would say there is considerable evidence that Galloway represents precisely the worst elements of the Jurassic left who, exhumed from their hermetically sealed bubble of fantasy, continue to argue as though we have seen the enemy and he is us. I become less convinced of that every time a mosque explodes and a protest regarding "Koran abuse" surfaces somewhere while Saudis react in outrage over the proposal that women be allowed to drive.
In a word; ASSHOLE...
This weeks asshole is none other than British politician George Galloway, who we recall the other week dressing down the sub-committee on the UN oil for food program who dared to accuse him of, gasp, taking MONEY from the UN (something I am sure hasn't ever been done before) for his own personal gain.
The sound-bite we received was oddly one-sided; we hear Senators timidly responding to Galloways' agressive attack but hear none of the evidence or the questioning. It just didn't make good drama.
Granted, the same Senators convinced of Galloways' wrongdoing might be probing into the lack of a phase four plan on the invasion of Iraq, or for that matter Rice's efforts to build a missile defense system just before the WTC imploded, and the fact that there is an "unamed source" behind the testimony stinks. But a little more information on this character from Hitchens and the picture becomes a lot more clear.
---------------------------
First of all, and easiest, he had dared to state under oath that he had not been a defender of the Saddam regime. This, from the man who visited Baghdad after the first Gulf war and, addressing Saddam, said: "Sir, I salute your courage, your strength, your indefatigability." How's that for lickspittling? And even if you make allowances for emotional public moments, you can't argue with Galloway's own autobiography, blush-makingly entitled I'm Not the Only One, which was published last spring and from which I offer the following extracts:
The state of Kuwait is "clearly a part of the greater Iraqi whole, stolen from the motherland by perfidious Albion." (Kuwait existed long before Iraq had even been named.) "In my experience none of the Ba'ath leaders have displayed any hostility to Jews." The post-Gulf war massacres of Kurds and Shia in 1991 were part of "a civil war that involved massive violence on both sides." Asked about Saddam's palaces after one of his many fraternal visits, he remarked, "Our own head of state has a fair bit of real estate herself." Her Majesty the Queen and her awful brood may take up a lot of room, but it's hardly comparable to one palace per province, built during a time of famine. Discussing Saddam's direct payments to the families of suicide-murderers--the very question he had refused to answer when I asked him--he once again lapsed into accidental accuracy, as with the Stalin comparison, and said that "as the martyred know, he put Iraq's money where his mouth was." That's true enough: It was indeed Iraq's money, if a bit more than Saddam's mouth.
=================
As much as I enjoyed Galloways' rejoinder, referring to Hitchens as a "drink-sodden ex-trotskyist poppinjay" and i always suspiciously regard him, as I do myself as suspect when we refer to ourselves as the "authentic left" I would say there is considerable evidence that Galloway represents precisely the worst elements of the Jurassic left who, exhumed from their hermetically sealed bubble of fantasy, continue to argue as though we have seen the enemy and he is us. I become less convinced of that every time a mosque explodes and a protest regarding "Koran abuse" surfaces somewhere while Saudis react in outrage over the proposal that women be allowed to drive.
In a word; ASSHOLE...
posted by Robert Smith at 11:29 AM
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