Les Enfants Terrible

CONSERVATIVE LOG LIVE-BLOGGED THE George Galloway hearing today and captured some of the witty reparte between senator Norm Coleman and Galloway. Nothing is resolved here, but it is important to note that Galloway's claim that the committee documents being identical to those in the Daily Telegraph is incorrect. The Daily Ablution has the wrap-up on that.

Galloway comes off as totally unconcerned with the OFF scandal and, in typical moonbat fashion, continues to draw attention away from the matter at hand, and focus on throwing accusations at the Bush administration for it's "illegal" war, drags out the bogus 100,000 casualties figure, Halliburton, and manages the obligatory Abu Ghraib reference. He even refers to the OFF scandal as "the mother of all smoke screens."

But when it is all said and done, he didn't have much to say about the$600,000 he received in campaign contributions he received resulting from the OFF program. Here is that exchange, between senator Carl Levin and Galloway:

12:05-- Levin: If Zureikat was involved with oil kickbacks to Saddam, would that trouble you? I am troubled by (American company) BayOil's involvement. How would you feel about Zureikat's involvement?

Galloway: I'm troubled that Oil-for-Food was "infanticide masquerading as politics."

Levin: Answer the question. Would it bother you that Zureikat was getting illegal kickbacks?

Galloway: "It's Mr. Zureikat's problem, not mine."

A little later...

Levin: You've made it clear that you just take the money for Miriam Appeal and don't check the source and are not troubled by the source when it comes to light it may have been illegal.

Galloway: dismissive grunt, no reply.

Galloway's defense was partly based on a dossier of quotes he has made regarding Hussein that he says shows his true feelings.

"I have a rather better record of opposition to the Hussein regime than you or any other member of the British or American government."

This from the man who once said:

Saddam Hussein greeted me with a handshake, which, again to my surprise, is surprisingly soft considering how many people that hand had dispatched, allegedly.

and this:

Saddam was a ruthless and cruel man who thought little of signing the death warrants of even close comrades. In this regard he was little different to the leaders of most regimes: we just don't know it in our own countries yet."

and this:

A majority of Arabs and Muslims [believe] the good Saddam did was more important than the many debits.

In other words, he is a run-of-the-mill apologist, noting that Hussein did some bad things, but no worse then any other world leader. We just haven't found Bush's mass graves yet, or Tony Blair's rape rooms.