His reversal on Iraq is quite extra-ordinary. He is a politician like many others. At times he paints the Islamic terrorists as "givers of all white light and innocent of any crimes against their own people". Makes me as sick as listening to George Bush and his attempt to turn the world black & white.
George Galloway - From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Galloway"Snip....
Iraq
Galloway meeting with Saddam Hussein.Wikiquote has a collection of quotations by or about:
George GallowayIn the late 1970s, Galloway was a founding member of the Campaign Against Repression and for Democratic Rights in Iraq (CARDRI), which campaigned against Saddam Hussein's regime in response to its suppression of the Iraqi Communist Party. He was critical of America and Britain's later role in supporting Saddam during the Iran-Iraq War and was involved in protests at Iraq's cultural centre in London in the 1980s.
Galloway opposed the 1991 Gulf War and was critical of the effect the subsequent sanctions had on the people of Iraq. He visited Iraq several times and met senior government figures. His involvement earned him the nickname the "member for Baghdad Central". In 1994, Galloway faced some of his strongest criticism on his return from a Middle-Eastern visit during which he had met Saddam Hussein ostensibly "to try and bring about an end to sanctions, suffering and war". At the meeting, he reported the support given to Saddam by the people of the Gaza Strip and infamously ended his speech with the phrase "Sir: I salute your courage, your strength, your indefatigability." <8>
In the speech, Galloway clearly is addressing Saddam in support of his fight against U.N. sanctions, the policies of the U.S. and U.K. governments, and Israel ("hatta al-nasr, hatta al-nasr, hatta al-Quds"
). When later pressed to explain why he would make such a speech, he said that it was for the benefit of the Iraqi people, collectively.
In 1999, Galloway was criticised for spending Christmas in Iraq with Tariq Aziz, the then Deputy Prime Minister. In the May 17, 2005 hearing of the United States Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, Galloway stated that he had had "many" meetings with Tariq Aziz, "more than ten", and characterized their relationship as "friendly". An archived version is available. <9>
In a House of Commons debate on 6 March 2002, Foreign Office Minister Ben Bradshaw said of Galloway that he "had ... made a career of being not just an apologist, but a mouthpiece, for the Iraqi regime over many years." Galloway called the Minister a liar and refused to withdraw, resulting in the suspension of the sitting. Bradshaw later withdrew his allegation, and Galloway apologised for using unparliamentary language. In August 2002, Galloway returned to Iraq and met Saddam Hussein for a second time; according to Galloway, the intention of the trip was to try and persuade Hussein to re-admit Dr Hans Blix and the United Nations weapons inspectors back into the country. After the meeting, Galloway gave a series of press interviews in which he commented that millions of Iraqis supported Saddam Hussein. <10>
Giving evidence in his libel case against the Daily Telegraph in 2004, Galloway testified that he regarded Saddam as a "bestial dictator" and would have welcomed his removal from power, but not by means of a military attack on Iraq. Galloway has also claimed to have been a prominent campaigner against Saddam Hussein's regime in the 1980s, and to have criticized the role of Margaret Thatcher's government in supporting arms sales to Iraq during the Iran/Iraq war. Labour MP Tam Dalyell said during the controversy over whether Galloway should be expelled from the Labour Party that "in the mid-1980s there was only one MP that I can recollect making speeches about human rights in Iraq and this was George Galloway." <11>.
When the issue of Galloway's meetings with Saddam Hussein is raised, including before the U.S. Senate, Galloway has argued that he had met Saddam "exactly the same number of times as Donald Rumsfeld met him. The difference is Donald Rumsfeld met him to sell him guns and to give him maps the better to target those guns." <12> However, just a few months later, Galloway called for the release of Tariq Aziz, Saddam's foreign minister, without charge, describing him as "an eminent diplomatic and intellectual person." During Saddam's government, Galloway holidayed and even disco-danced with Saddam's foreign minister.
Galloway signing an asylum seekers petition, sitting on the edge of the StWC stage at the 2005 Make Poverty History rally.Galloway's critics have pointed to passages in his biography I'm Not the Only One as examples of him acting as an apologist for Saddam. Among the examples frequently cited are the description of Saddam Hussein's attack on the Kurds, democrats and Marsh Arabs in 1991 as "a civil war with massive violence on both sides", and of the Shi'ites killed in the 1980s as often "a fifth column" who "actively undermined the Iraqi war effort in the interests of their country's enemy". Galloway writes that Saddam Hussein is "likely to have been the leader in history who came closest to creating a truly Iraqi national identity, and he developed Iraq and the living, health, social and education standards of his own people".
Galloway is Vice-President of the Stop the War Coalition
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