Totally in the Tank for Saddam!

If the congressional report on the United Nation's Oil for Food Scandal is anywhere close to accurate, British Member of Parliament (MP) George Galloway has a huge problem. The report claims to have the goods on Mr. Galloway's receiving some $600,000 worth of Saddam's oil vouchers:

In a report issued here, Minnesota Senator Norm Coleman and his colleagues on the Senate Subcommittee for Investigations claim to have evidence showing that Mr Galloway's political organisation and his wife received vouchers worth almost $600,000 (£338,000) from the then Iraqi government.

"We have what we call the smoking gun," said Mr Coleman, who will send the report to the US Department of Justice and the British authorities. The MP could face charges of perjury, making false statements and obstructing a Congressional investigation. Each charge carries a possible jail term of five years and a fine of $250,000.

Not that it's likely a British MP will be tried in the United States, but surely the British government may have some questions of its own. Of course, the bombastic Mr. Galloway gives as good as he gets (although you can sure tell he wishes Sen. Coleman was subject to Britain's asinine libel laws.

"I have not made a penny out of oil deals with Iraq, or indeed any other kind of deal," the MP said last night. "This ought to be dead, yet Norm Coleman parrots it once more from 3,000 miles away and protected by privilege." His spokesman later described the report as "derogatory and defamatory". The report claims that between 1999 and 2003 Mr Galloway personally solicited and was granted vouchers for 23 million barrels of oil, at below the market price. These vouchers could then be resold at a profit. It also alleges that money was channelled to Amineh Abu-Zayyad, the MP's wife, and to the Mariam Appeal, an organisation set up by Mr Galloway to help a young Iraqi girl with leukemia.

Mr Coleman maintains that his evidence is based on bank records, as well as interviews with Tariq Aziz, the former foreign minister and deputy prime minister under Saddam, and with the former vice-president Taha Yasin Ramadan.

Mr Galloway's appearance before the panel, the Minnesota senator said, was "a lot of bombast". The MP was "anything but straight with the committee; he was anything but straight with the American people".

If so, it goes a long way to explaining Galloway's longstanding opposition to American and British policy on the War on Terror.