[To hear what Galloway really said and how he said it please go to
http://hsgac.senate.gov/audio_video/051705video.ram
and start at about 1 hour 58 minutes. I like this guy. If more of us
could learn to respond, think and act this way we might really start
to be heard. He's not the first leader to show true courage. Cynthia
McKinney and Andreas von Bülow deserve that honor. But George
Galloway took the field at the right moment. He took it by not
running away. – MCR]

British MP denies oil-for-food charges

Called the probe the 'mother of all smokescreens'

Tuesday, May 17, 2005
CNN.com
http://www.cnn.com/2005/POLITICS/05/17/oil.food/index.html

In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is
distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior
interest in receiving the included information for research and
educational purposes.

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- British Member of Parliament George Galloway
angrily denied Tuesday that he profited from Saddam Hussein's regime
and criticized a Senate panel probing alleged corruption in the U.N.
oil-for-food program in Iraq.

Galloway, an outspoken critic of the war in Iraq, called the panel's
investigation the "mother of all smokescreens" used to divert
attention from the "pack of lies" that led to the 2003 invasion.

"I told the world that Iraq, contrary to your claims, did not have
weapons of mass destruction. I told the world, contrary to your
claims, that Iraq had no connection to al Qaeda. I told the world,
contrary to your claims, that Iraq had no connection to the atrocity
on 9/11, 2001," he told the panel's Republican chairman, Sen. Norm
Coleman of Minnesota.

"Senator, in everything I said about Iraq, I turned out to be right
and you turned out to be wrong. And 100,000 people have paid with
their lives -- 1,600 of them American soldiers sent to their deaths
on a pack of lies, 15,000 of them wounded, many of them disabled
forever, on a pack of lies."

He added, "Senator, this is the mother of all smokescreens. You are
trying to divert attention from the crimes that you supported."

Galloway's appearance Tuesday before the Permanent Subcommittee on
Investigations of the Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs
Committee was the first by an official allegedly involved in the
scandal.

In a report last week, the subcommittee stated that deposed Iraqi
dictator Saddam Hussein granted Galloway vouchers for 20 million
barrels of oil between 2000 and 2003.

He strongly disputed that allegation Tuesday.

"I am not now or ever been an oil trader and neither has anyone on my
behalf. I have never seen a barrel of oil, owned one, bought one,
sold one, and neither has anybody on my behalf," Galloway testified.

He also said he did not own a company that trades in oil.

"If you had any evidence of that I had ever engaged in any actual oil
transaction, if you had any evidence that anybody ever gave me any
money, it would be before the public and before this" committee
today, Galloway said.

Coleman, a former district attorney, told Galloway before his sworn
testimony that "senior Iraqi officials have confirmed that you, in
fact, received oil allocations and that the documents that identify
you as an allocation recipient are valid."

Galloway challenged that accusation in his opening statement.

"Now, I know that standards have slipped over the last few years in
Washington, but for a lawyer, you're remarkably cavalier with any
idea of justice," he told Coleman.

Galloway, 51, is a leading critic of British Prime Minister Tony
Blair and his alliance with President Bush in the war in Iraq. He was
re-elected on an antiwar platform earlier this month.

He said he was "friendly" with former Iraqi Foreign Minister Tariq
Aziz and met him many times but that he met with Saddam only twice in
his career -- in 1994 and in 2002 -- the last time to persuade Saddam
to allow U.N. weapons inspectors into the country.

He said he had met with Saddam "exactly as many times as Donald
Rumsfeld has met with him."

"The difference is Donald Rumsfeld met him to sell him guns and give
him maps," Galloway said in a heated opening statement.

"I met him to try and bring about an end to sanctions, suffering and
war, and on the second occasion, I met him to try and persuade him to
allow Hans Blix and U.N. inspectors back into country,"

Rumsfeld visited Baghdad to meet Saddam as President Reagan's Middle
East envoy in the 1980s, when the U.S. sided with Iraq in its war
with Iran. Blix was chief U.N. weapons inspector in Iraq before the
war.

Galloway complained that the panel had determined his guilt without
speaking to him.

"You have my name on lists provided to you... by the convicted bank
robber and fraudster and con man Ahmed Chalabi, who many people, to
their credit, in your country now realize played a decisive role in
leading your country into the disaster in Iraq," Galloway told the
Senate panel.

Other allegations reportedly came from Iraqi detainees.

"In these circumstances, knowing what the world knows about how you
treat prisoners in Abu Ghraib prison, in Bagram Air Base
[Afghanistan], in Guantanamo Bay -- including, if I may say, British
citizens being held in those places -- I'm not sure how much
credibility anyone would put on anything you manage to get from a
prisoner in those circumstances," he said.

The Senate subcommittee has alleged in recent days that a number of
European politicians were rewarded by Saddam for supporting Iraq's
bid to lift economic sanctions imposed after Iraq invaded Kuwait in
1990.

The subcommittee report, relying on Iraqi Oil Ministry documents and
interviews with detained Saddam loyalists, alleged that Galloway
received allocations for 20 million barrels from June 2000 to June
2003 and arranged for two companies, Aredio Petroleum-France and
Middle East Advanced Semiconductor Inc., to take delivery of the
crude.

Galloway said he never heard of Aredio, but confirmed that the
president of Middle East ASI, Jordanian businessman named Fawaz
Zureikat, was a good friend and the second-biggest benefactor of a
British charity he started called Mariam's Appeal.

Zureikat donated about $600,000. A British probe of the
charity "found no impropriety" in fund-raising, Galloway said.

"He may have signed an oil contract. It had nothing to do with me,"
Galloway said. "I was aware he was doing extensive business with
Iraq. I did not know the details of it. It was not my business."

Europeans implicated

In addition to Galloway, the panel also implicated former French
Interior Minister Charles Pasqua, who allegedly was allocated 11
million barrels.

"I wrote to Mr. Coleman," Pasqua said Sunday, "and I told him that
all allegations about myself are false."

Russian Deputy Parliament Speaker Vladimir Zhirinovsky, who was
accused Monday of receiving 76 million barrels of Iraqi crude oil,
denied the accusation.

"I've never signed any contract and never received a cent from Iraq,"
Zhirinovsky told a Russian TV interviewer.

Oil ended up in U.S.

The panels seem to agree that three-quarters of the oil Iraq was
permitted to export under oil-for-food ended up in the United States,
though U.S. firms directly purchased less than 1 percent of the crude.

A new report from Democrats on the Senate subcommittee concludes the
United States ended up with a majority of the oil lifted from Iraq
after vendors paid illicit surcharges of 10 cents to 30 cents a
barrel to Saddam.

Investigators have estimated Saddam pocketed at least $2 billion by
extorting the surcharges and kickbacks on humanitarian goods
purchased.

While oil-for-food was operating from 1996 to 2003, Saddam got to
choose the buyers of 3.4 billion barrels of oil that sold for $64
billion.

The oil revenue went into a U.N.-controlled bank account that doled
out money for U.N.-approved sales of food, medicine and supplies to
Iraq.

The illicit surcharges were typically wired into Iraq-controlled bank
accounts in Lebanon, Oman and an Iraqi-front company in the United
Arab Emirates, or paid in cash to Iraqi embassies and flown to
Baghdad.

Of the $228 million in surcharged oil, the Democratic report found
the United States imported 525 million barrels, or 52 percent of it.

Among the biggest end users of this oil were Valero, Premcor, Alon
USA, and Exxon, according to the report.


CNN's Phil Hirschkorn contributed to this report.