If this turns out to be true, it’s a bombshell. The chief left-wing anti-war campaigner in Britain’s parliament, Labour Party MP George Galloway, has his name on several documents discovered in Baghdad by the Daily Telegraph. The documents allegedly show a huge pay-off scheme from Saddam’s oil profits to the anti-war activist – worth up to $500,000 a year – in return for his political work in defense of Saddam. Here are the relevant documents. Here are details of the alleged Jordanian go-between. Galloway has denied the allegations thus:
Asked to explain the document, he said yesterday: “Maybe it is the product of the same forgers who forged so many other things in this whole Iraq picture. Maybe The Daily Telegraph forged it. Who knows?” When the letter from the head of the Iraqi intelligence service was read to him, he said: “The truth is I have never met, to the best of my knowledge, any member of Iraqi intelligence. I have never in my life seen a barrel of oil, let alone owned, bought or sold one.”
Not exactly a clear denial, I’d say. Notice the Clintonian “maybes” and “to the best of my knowledge.” Notice that Galloway doesn’t clearly deny receiving laundered oil money either. I imagine the Telegraph must be pretty confident of its source materials, but I cannot independently verify them, of course. And I haven’t seen the story picked up yet by anyone else. But this is the lead story in the largest-selling quality newspaper in Britain. If confirmed, it couldn’t be more damaging to a man synonymous in Britain with the anti-war movement. It will be fascinating to see how that movement responds in the coming days to the notion that one of its key figures may actually have been on the dictator’s pay-roll. It will be even more fascinating if any other such documents turn up.
The Dish 