6 Comments:

That Stalin quote made me curious about what folks around here think about Christopher Hitchens's take on Galloway. I'm sure Hitchens's lefty bona fides has worn a little thin of late for a lot of people.

By  Joseph Thvedt, at 9:40 AM  

Great link, thanks!
I'm not an admirer of Hitchens, but he has the guts to include Galloway's criticism of him: "He had evidently been admirably consistent in his attention to my humble work, because he changed tone and said that this was just what he'd expect from a 'drink-sodden ex-Trotskyist popinjay.' It takes a little more than this to wound your correspondent--I could still hold a martini without spilling it when I was 'the greatest polemicist of our age' in 2001--but please note that the real thrust is contained in the word 'Trotskyist.' Galloway says that the worst day of his entire life was the day the Soviet Union fell."

By  Hammer, at 10:10 AM  

I don't think anyone who has paid much attention feels that Galloway is not a deeply flawed political figure, I believe Hammer even implied as much in one of his posts. That doesn't diminish the appeal of seeing Norm Coleman get a load of inconvenient facts crammed down his throat in front of an international audience. I also note that Hitchens does nothing to refute any of Galloway's actual statements. I don't think many of us here wish Galloway were our Senator or Representative but we sure wish some of the Democrats in this country would deliver his style of smack-down once in a while.

By  Jambo, at 11:33 AM  

I also note that Hitchens does nothing to refute any of Galloway's actual statements.

No?

It would have been a simple matter for them to call him out on a number of things. 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."

and

At the hearing, also, Galloway was half-correct in yelling at the subcommittee that he had been a critic of Saddam Hussein when Donald Rumsfeld was still making friendly visits to Baghdad. Here, a brief excursion into the aridities of left history may elucidate more than the Galloway phenomenon.

Well, it wasn't all that brief, so I won't quote any more, but it's there in the article. He also goes into the more substantive question of Galloway's and Fawaz Zureikat's involvement in Oil-for-Food.

By  Joseph Thvedt, at 9:12 PM  

I'm sorry, I was only referring to his attacks on Coleman. Thgose were the only parts that really interested me but I see that I did nothing in my comment to indicate that. I have no doubt there may have been massive corruption in the Oil for Food program. Maybe Galloway was involved, maybe he wasn't. I don't much care. I think the reason most of us on the left enjoyed his testimony was because he said all the things we wish Democrats would say about the Iraq war (and I do think I managed to get that across). If Galloway ends up being guilty of skimming a few million dollars that makes him a bad guy but it does not change his critique of American policy.

By  Jambo, at 1:31 AM  

So far, at worst, Galloway is accused of receiving vouchers for 20 million barrels of oil. The original figure I read was that the vouchers could be sold for 30 cents.

By  Hammer, at 7:22 AM  

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