Galloway tore that Senate Committee to pieces.. Laughing my ass off about Storm'n Norm who went home wimpering with his tail between his legs. Nice to hear a bit of truth spoken in the Capitol for a change.

Well, as one of his constituents, and a guy who actually voted for him, I suppose I qualify as one of 'his peeps.' And yes, I was favourably impressed, with his eloquence, and his refusal to be intimidated by the kangaroo court that tried and found him guilty in absentia last week without the courtesy of actually asking him for his side of the story.
What you see as distractions I daresay he sees as an opportunity to put forward uncomfortable truths. Not many may have been watching on your side of the Atlantic, but he's the leading story on all the main evening network news programmes tonight over here in the UK. And the reaction over here is favourable to him. Let's not forget he won an election handsomely last week.

By the way, please don't be offended by my fake email - I generally don't leave my email address lying around, for obvious reasons. This is your blog - it's certainly your right to delete this comment, and so be it if you must.

No problem on fake emails, especially with polite comments.

Thanks :-)
I find it interesting that the Americans who are commenting on this story seem unused to the sort of debate that Galloway was engaging in, ie. challenging the questioner's assumptions and making supplementary points when answering questions, rather than simply doing the Yes, No business.
I think if you rewatch the testimony, or read a transcript, you'll find that actually very little (none?) of it was irrelevant distraction but was all pertinent to the larger questions that should have been asked. Hence the lack of 'hammering on about AIPAC and Israel' - Galloway's views on the Israel/Palestine issue aren't really relevant to these allegations.
The thing I'm genuinely surprised at is just how many people seem to hate him, for no good reason. Can you enlighten me? Genuine question. Thanks.

You're going to have to ask elsewhere for the laundry-list of reasons people like me hate the likes of George Galloway. I read about him, I don't memorize the talking points. Start with my understanding that he's pretty much an unrepentant Stalinist who's saddest day was the Soviet Union's fall and who's allied with some of the planet's worst actors and work forward. I'm not sure what the use would be, anyway. Someone who's a Galloway fan would probably like most of the things I find despicable about him.

I don't think he was speaking truth to power or any such thing. I think he was trying to avoid the issues the committee was there to investigate and instead pretend it was his entire world view, America, the War on Terror, etc...on trial. The question is who benefited from OFF perfidy - to him it may not really matter, or may be a very small thing in his view of the world...so be it. But that's not the concern of the committee. It's not what they or he were there for.

Believe me, no one expected or expects a politician to show up and give simple yes or no answers. It's always up to us to listen close and decide if the answers given in lieu of a direct yes or no represent an attempt to get an important truth across in spite of a questioner's unfairness, or whether it's just a dodge. I say Galloway's talk was a lot of hand waving and hypnosis spinners.

I think he's not above Jew-baiting for votes, nor above taking OFF kickeback money for his charity - all the while excoriating others for a million dead kids...while missing the irony of where a bunch of the money intended to keep them alive apparently went.

They wouldn't have "muddied" themselves if they'd had a list of probing questions but in the event they let him off after he'd successfully bloviated past about three of them, if memory serves.

The more questions he refused to answer or could not dismiss, the longer his sworn testimony, the greater the case against him would appear to be and the less he would have been able to convert this occasion to his profit. As it stands, the Stoppers are glowing with joy. Were PSI unaware that Galloway was a demagogue? That he would try to put the US on trial? Why didn't they protect themselves by contacting him before they published their report? Why did their report refer to "documents" that purported to date from before OFF even existed?

Whether PSI ultimately withdraw their conclusions is less important than whether those very conclusions are sufficiently discredited in the eyes of the world that they no longer matter. They had access to marvelous material and this is the result of their work? They've blown an incredible opportunity...

Damn you, Coleman! Damn you!

This was but a single, if not entirely insignificant, foray. The notion that Galloway carried the day, in any way other than as a type of performance, is not to be taken too seriously. Coleman was not entirely prepared for certain tropes, offensives and defensive rhetorical initiatives, but it was a single foray only, not to be overly assessed one way or the other, not at all decisive.

Similarly silly is the notion there is something unique about avoiding yes/no answers, that too is a grand sort of silliness. Good grief.

As regards individual forays or initiatives, Rommel won some initial and (temporarily) significant battles in North Africa; the Germans on the eastern front, initially, tore up truly huge chunks of Russia. Now remind me, what occurred in N. Africa? And what occurred on the German eastern front, in the end? Enjoy Galloway's performances while you're able, such as they are.

Solomon, thanks for taking the time to respond. Much appreciated. :-)
I would recommend you read his autobiography which might reveal more about him. (although you may not want to contribute to his finances :-)

He's not a Stalinist, unrepentant or otherwise. He's on record denying this. If you read his book, it's clear in there that he's a socialist. (This is NOT the same thing!) He was also a member of the UK Labour Party (a socialist party until Tony Blair took over the leadership) until he got thrown out for embarrassing the party leadership once too often, and not the Communist Party. With regard to the Soviet Union quote, then I think you need to see things from a European/rest of the World perspective for a moment.
"If there was a Soviet Union today, we would not be having this conversation about plunging into a new war in the Middle East, and the US would not be rampaging around the globe." Galloway is an anti-imperialist, first and foremost. In so much as the presence of the Soviet Union limited American expansionism, he supported it's existence. Since the disappearance of the USSR, the population of much of the rest of the world are also alarmed by the global ambitions of the American empire - client states, military bases, torture and detention without trial and all the rest of it. Galloway is certainly not alone there. As an American, you may not feel so troubled by the current situation, but it's not doing your country any favours internationally.
I doubt very much that Galloway would have supported the excesses of Stalin's USSR, but Gorbachev's reformed Soviet Union was a completely different place, and infinitely better than the current bloody dictatorships and Mafiosi run states springing up in its place. (Uzbekistan anyone? Mad dictator boiling opponents alive in cauldrons, shooting hundreds of unarmed protestors in the streets?)

Avoiding the issues? Well, if the committee was trying to establish whether or not he was knowingly pocketing cash from Saddam, and Galloway was innocent, then he couldn't help but answer how he did - which was to deny all knowledge of any document which had his name on it. It's a bit like the old witch trials - his denial of everything is taken as evasiveness and thus evidence of guilt. Duck the witch, see if she floats! And some questions are not amenable to a simple Yes or No. 'Have you stopped beating your wife? Answer the question Yes or No please' Impossible to answer, if you're not a wifebeater.

Admittedly, he chose to take the opportunity while he was there to grandstand in front of a televised audience and make some political points but Hey! He's a politician, that's what they do! If he's innocent, then he didn't really have a lot else to say to the committee. And he did pay for his own airfare :-)

Jew-baiting? I'm not sure where that comes from. I live in Bethnal Green, and voted for him in the recent election, and have Jewish blood, (long way back, not Orthodox or anything) not that that's really relevant, as I certainly wouldn't support a racist of any sort. At no time did I see or hear of any racist statements by Galloway, or his Respect party. (No, I'm not a member of his party, but he did get my vote) The candidate he beat, Oona King, from the Labour Party, did do some tricky stuff, by contrast. They distributed different election leaflets to different areas, with edits removing or adding the word 'Muslim', depending on whether the area was predominantly White or Muslim. Unethical, if not downright racist, I'm sure you'll agree. Oona King alleged racism, as an excuse for losing her formerly safe seat - but she was elected by the very same voters twice before, in 1997 and 2001- before the Iraq war which she backed wholeheartedly, which was the main theme of the contest. Draw your own conclusion.
'Nor above taking kickback money...' Well, that's your opinion, but you have to admit you don't have any evidence to back it. And neither does Norm Coleman.
Best Regards
Londoner

Oliver Kamm comments as meaningfully as any on Galloway's performance. An opening summarization by Kamm:

"As so often with Galloway, bombast and non sequitur served his purpose, to the detriment of public understanding"

He also references Hitchens's piece in the Mirror on the same subject. The entire article, other than noting the unpreparedness of the senators, can proximately be summarized in the following extract:

"The real issue, as the documents make clear, is not whether Gorgeous George got money but whether his patron and associate and contributor Fawaz Zureikat was the beneficiary of oil deals and kickbacks.

"On this point, Mr Galloway has arranged to be adequately uninformed for some time."

Kamm also references a Jeremy Vine BBC-Radio2 debate between professor Colleen Graffy and, on the pro-Respect side, Lindsey German, which is worth noting.

What is prominent, and strikingly so, among Galloway's enthusiasts, is the facile and occasionally blithe and smug (far too occasionally) complacency about the specific issues Kamm and Hitchens, among others, more pointedly detail. Precisely as Oliver Kamm summarizes, in the referenced quote above.

Hence the attentiveness, and applause, for a diversionary performance coupled with a blithe, apathetic disdain for any calls to more conscientiously address the substance.