 MP George Galloway "I told the world that Iraq contrary to your claims, Iraq did not have weapons of mass distruction. 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. I told the world contrary to your claims, that the Iraqi people would resist a British and American invasion of their country and that the fall of Baghdad would not be the beginning of the end but merely the end of the beginning.
"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.
"If the world had listened to Kofi Annan, whose dismissal you demanded, if the world had listened to President Chiraq, who you want to paint as some kind of corrupt traitor, if the world had listened to me and the anti-war movement in Britain, we would not be in the disaster we are in today.
"Senator, this is the mother of all smoke screens. You are trying to divert attention from the crimes that you supported, from the theft of billions of dollars of Iraq's wealth. Have a look at the real Oil-for-Food scandal. Have a look at the 14 months you were in charge in Baghdad - the first 14 months - when $8.8 Billion Dollars of Iraq's wealth went missing on your watch. Have a look at Halliburton and the other American corporations that stole not only Iraq's money but the money of the American taxpayer.
"Have a look at the oil that you didn't even meter that you were shipping out of the country and selling, the proceeds of which went 'who knows where?' Have a look at the $800,000,000 you gave to American military commanders to hand out around the country without even counting it or weighing it. Have a look at the real scandal breaking in the newspapers today, revealed in the earlier testimony in this committee, that the biggest sanctions busters were not me or Russian politicians or French politicians. The real sanctions-busters were your own companies with the connivence of your own government."
georgegalloway.com
Note 1 - Testimony took place 5/17/05
*Note 2 - per 3/28/07: 3,242 deaths of US military, and minimum 23,924 wounded. |
