Not that we didn't know this already -- at least, those of us in Minnesota who have to put up with the walking sock puppet.
But courtesy of today's
Guardian, here's
further confirmation:
(More below the jump)
Here are the key paragraphs:
The central allegations first surfaced in the Daily Telegraph in April 2003 when the paper claimed that Mr Galloway had personally profited from Iraqi oil deals. He sued for libel and last December won a resounding victory in the high court with £150,000 in damages.
A few days after the Telegraph's reports, another paper, the Christian Science Monitor, alleged it had documents to show that Mr Galloway had received $10m from the regime over 11 years. It, too, had to apologise and pay damages when the documents were shown to be forgeries.
The senate committee appears to have mixed up these two events.
And in both cases, Galloway has already won libel claims.
Here's what the Torygraph has to say:
A spokesman for the Telegraph said: "The committee appears to be confusing our documents with a set of alleged receipts that emerged in Baghdad some days after our story appeared. These purported to record direct payments to Mr Galloway in the early 1990s. They were offered to the Daily Telegraph but, as they were clearly crude forgeries, we declined to publish them."
So the Torygraph doesn't like crude forgeries, but it still will publish stuff that causes it to lose libel cases.
In any event, I expect to see George Galloway make finely-chopped mincemeat of Senator Blow-Dry, who if his handlers have any brains at all will soon quietly drop his demand to have Galloway come and spank the perfectly-coiffed Coleman testify on the Senate floor.
If not, I'm getting out my popcorn bowl. This will be lovely!