British parliament member George Galloway on Tuesday turned the tables on US lawmakers alleging he pocketed Iraqi oil kickbacks, and accused the US of unparalleled corruption and waste in Iraq.
The fiery left-wing politician came to Congress to defend his name against allegations he pocketed hundreds of thousands of dollars in illegal funds from the UN oil-for-food program during former president Saddam Hussein's regime.
But Galloway said it was his US accusers who must answer for the "disaster" caused by the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003 and the deaths that have been seen since.
PHOTO: AP
"I gave my heart and soul to stop you committing the disaster that you did commit in invading Iraq, and I told the world that your case for the war was a pack of lies," Galloway told a Senate panel.
"Everything I said about Iraq turned out to be right, and you turned out to be wrong, and 100,000 people have paid with their lives," he told the Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs subcommittee.
He said US military action against Iraq was based on "a pack of lies."
Galloway vehemently denied ever receiving oil kickbacks from Saddam's regime.
He dismissed the hearing as "the mother of all smokescreens," saying the relentless focus on alleged UN wrongdoing by some US politicians deflected attention from the far bigger transgression of the US-led invasion.
"I am not now, nor have I ever been an oil trader," Galloway told the panel, calling the charges "utterly unsubstantiated and false."
"You have nothing on me ... other than my name on lists ... many of which have been drawn up after the installation of your puppet government in Baghdad," Galloway said.
Several US congressional committees currently are carrying out probes into scandals at the UN oil-for-food program.
The US$64 billion humanitarian program was designed to allow UN-supervised sales of Iraqi oil to buy medicine and food to lessen the impact of international sanctions against the people of Iraq. But millions of dollars in kickbacks are said to have been paid to foreign officials, who in turn made contributions to Saddam.
The US Senate committee said it had "detailed evidence" that Galloway received some 20 million barrels of oil in allocations from the Saddam regime.
Galloway, who was drummed out of Britain's ruling Labour Party because of his opposition to the Iraq war, derisively swept aside those charges.
"Who paid me hundreds of thousand of dollars? The answer is nobody," he said.
And far from being an avid supporter of Saddam, as congressional accusers have alleged, Galloway said he had been an active opponent of the regime.
"I have a rather better record of opposition to Saddam Hussein than you do, and than any member of the British or American governments do," he said.
"I was an opponent of Saddam Hussein at a time when British and American governments and businessmen were selling him guns and gas," he said.
Galloway proudly waved his anti-war credentials at the hearing.
His scathing denunciation of the Iraq venture left some US lawmakers squirming in their seats, particularly when he urged them to refocus their UN investigations from the world body and onto the role played by Washington.
"Have a look at the real oil-for-food scandal. Have a look at the 14 months you were in charge of Baghdad when 8.8 billion dollars of Iraq's wealth went missing on your watch," Galloway said.
"Have a look at the other American corporations that stole not only Iraq's money, but the money of the American taxpayer," he said.
"Have a look at the oil that you didn't even meter, that you were shipping out of the country selling," he said, "the proceeds of which went who knows where."
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