There's an interesting bit of theater being played out in the US Senate today, and I'm NOT talking about the nuclear option.
Today's testimony by British Parliamentarian George Galloway before the Senate permanent subcommitte on investigations should be entertaining for many reasons, one of which is that Galloway's going into this with obvious relish. He should be, the US Senate is doing this simply to set-dress for upcoming attacks on the UN, and as usual, the rush to create false impressions has led to some slipshod work by the Bush/Blair hatchetmen. You see, the evidence against Mr Galloway was forged in what can only be an homage to the RatherGate incident.
Glasgow MP George Galloway has been accused of accepting kickbacks from Saddam in the Oil for Food program, and as such he has been the subject of investigation and intense media scrutiny (imagine intense media scrutiny, if you can)in the UK. He was even
suspended from the Labour Party. Purely by coincidence, surely, Galloway has been a vocal critic of the war in Iraq, and is quite far to the left politically, having painted big shiny targets on himself with statements in support of the
Palestinian cause, Saddam Hussein, and
the Soviet Union. So of course, the wingnuts couldn't resist...
The way I see it, this is three birds with one stone for the good guys:
- the forgeries are an almost exact duplication of what went on with the infamous National Guard memos - cut'n'paste, wrong fonts, etc.
- puts the Downing Street Documents in sharp relief as the UNforged hard evidence they are
- Shuts up some of the tempest in a teapot that is the Newsweek whoopsie.