(note: this interview is followed by a short discussion with Bill Dobbs of United for Peace and Justice)

Galloway Goes to Washington - Again, for September 24th Anti-War Demonstration

Talk Nation Radio broadcast for September 14, 2005, Dori Smith

British MP George Galloway talks about his book on the Senate testimony he provided to Senator Ron Coleman about oil-for-food and the war in Iraq, and United for Peace and Justice organizer Bill Dobbs talks about demonstrations on September 14th in D.C. and other major cities.

Background: MP George Galloway won the 2005 vote for MP in Bethnal Green and Bow in East London by upsetting the Labour Party’s Oona King, who supported Tony Blair’s policies in Iraq. In explosive hearings in May of 2005, George Galloway told Senator Coleman: “Have a look at the real oil-for-food scandal. Have a look at the 14 months you were in charge of 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 million dollars 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 connivance of your own government.”

MP George Galloway has written a book called Mr. Galloway Goes to Washington about his experience testifying before the U.S. Senate in May, 2005. You can find the book at The New Press and Amazon.com.

Smith: “George Galloway has long advocated for the rights of Iraqis and has called for an end to U.S. sanctions against Iraq over more than a decade. He has also advocated for the rights of Palestinians. Moments before our interview AP reported that U.S. Counsel General Jacob Walles accepted a check from the Palestinian Refugee Council for ten-thousand dollars in a ceremony in the West Bank. He said the gift means a lot because it comes from the poorest Palestinians: George Galloway welcome to Talk Nation Radio.”

GEORGE GALLOWAY: Thank you very much. Very glad to be here.

Smith: “I would like to ask you first to comment on this donation from the Palestinian people to victims of hurricane Katrina.”

GEORGE GALLOWAY: “Well, I’m a bit surprised. I suppose I’m glad in a way that the American Government has decided to accept it. It’s pretty tragic that the richest country in the world is in a position of having to take aid from one of the most benighted people in the world who have been under occupation for many decades and whose people live lives of grinding, almost uninterrupted poverty and repression. But it’s an extraordinary chain of events that Katrina has unleashed that the United States Government has been exposed to the world and is standing naked before the world, as not just a malevolent government in most people’s eyes but an incompetent one too and that’s a pretty toxic mixture. Malevolence and incompetence but I’m afraid that that’s how the U.S. Presidency looks today.”

Smith: “I do want to go back to your previous trip to America when you testified before the U.S. Senate but first let me ask you your thoughts as you arrive in the U.S. to find George Bush’s approval rating at 38%. Is this the best of times or the worst of times for progressives in the U.S. and the U.K.?”

GEORGE GALLOWAY: “Well I think in Dickens’s words it is the best of times and it is the worst of times. It’s the worst of times for those poor people on the receiving end of that arrogant stupidity that I’ve just been talking about. But on the other hand for those who wish to speed the day of the political demise of the forces currently ruling the United States it’s the best of times because I think the scales have fallen from the eyes of many people. They can see now more clearly that which they could not see before and I think the neocon far right Republicans around Bush are heading for some very significant political defeats and they’d be heading for them even more clearly if there was a clear alternative in United States politics. And that’s perhaps more than anything else what we currently lack.”

Smith: “You politically are controversial. You have been slammed or smeared by people like Ruppert Murdock and others. Just talk about that just a little bit here because I know one of the big problems with getting good information out to America is that our press was really consumed by major corporations and large numbers of the owners of media were members of the Republican Party and boosters of George Bush.”

GEORGE GALLOWAY: “Yes, as the English man of letters, Doctor Johnson once said, there is no dictatorship more grim than the dictatorship of the prevailing orthodoxy, and I think that’s very largely what we have around the world actually but perhaps most acutely here in the United States where it matters most.

Not only do you have a media which is overwhelmingly corporately controlled it seems servile to the point of comedy almost towards power in a way that even Murdock’s papers in Britain are not. That may be something to do with the political culture. It may be that that’s one of the reasons why my appearance in front of the U.S. Senate made the impact that it did because people are not used to hearing this nobility which the American political class pretends to be challenged in such a way quite so plainly and quite so up close and personal. But as someone who has spent his life fighting against these prevailing orthodoxies and who is encouraged by the speed with which these prevailing orthodoxies are proving hollow, and bankrupt, I can only do what I can as long as God gives me breath to tell the truth as I see it and hope to persuade others of it.

We are living in a period where as you implied those powerful people who rule the country, rule the world, and control most of the media, are increasingly exposed as well simply wrong at the very best and worse than wrong, deliberately wrong and deceiving at the very worst.”

Smith: “About your testimony, I want to turn to the aspect of this cash. We’ve seen in the past few weeks that there have been even more reports about billions of dollars in oil revenues from Iraq that were under U.S. control that have not been accounted for, some Iraqi ministers have left, disappeared, some have been arrested.”

GEORGE GALLOWAY: “There is a fantastically grand larceny going on in Iraq and has been since the day that the American forces arrived and Paul Bremer and his predecessor and his successor were installed. But the worst of it happened during Paul Bremer’s watch. Something like $8.8 billion dollars, “B” billion dollars of Iraqi oil is unaccounted for, has been simply shipped out of the country to God knows whom, to the profit of whoever we don’t know.

$800 million dollars, estimate, because nobody ever counted it or even weighed it, was given to American military officers to go around Iraq to hand out. And no one, of course, knows how much of it was handed out and to whom it was handed out and how much of it ended up back here.

This kind of grand larceny is before you even begin to calibrate the theft of the American Tax Payer’s money through the overcharging by companies like Halliburton of the U.S. Tax Payer for supplies, right down to mashed potatoes, the most expensive mashed potatoes on the planet are undoubtedly those paid for by the American Taxpayer in occupied Iraq. And they want us to be troubled to coin a phrase by whether or not Kofi Anan’s son got a Mercedes car by trading on his father’s position as the Secretary General of the United Nations.

Well, frankly, if he did he shouldn’t have, but it’s a drop in the ocean compared to the sea of corruption that the United States occupation is presiding over in Iraq.”

Smith: “Let’s talk about the consequences from your testimony before the Senate and Republican Senator Ron Coleman. You know, as you say Americans were awakened, but also shocked at the way you approached the Senate. You had bold facts, but you also had a good portion of outrage. But I think people too picked up on the fact that you were testifying with this forcefulness because you really care about what is happening to the people of Iraq and that came across as well.

Talk about the amount of press you received and the consequences of that testimony.”

GEORGE GALLOWAY: “The impact was evident as soon as I got outside the door of the Senate when a very large black man, a janitor in the building, I had better not further identify him in case he loses his job, punched the air and said, way to go brother you’ve sent George Bush back to his ranch.

Then I knew that it had made some impact and when I got outside to the waiting cameras and started to talk to the media it was evident that the thing had gone well. And more than 22,000 Americans emailed me in the weeks that followed and I haven’t even yet replied to them all.

The New Press contacted me about doing a book of it and that’s out now in the stores, called, “Mr. Galloway Goes to Washington,” and the idea of this speaking tour that I’m now on and Boston is my first engagement this evening, began to emerge. So I think that a lot of people were happy, but the way I put it is this, I made all of the best people in the world happy and all of the worst people in the world angry and sad, as a result of that Senate appearance. And that must count as quite a good day’s work.”

Smith: “Now I feel that I must ask you to talk a little bit about Fallujah.”

GEORGE GALLOWAY: “Yes.”

Smith: “And to inform our listeners about events there and what kinds of things have developed since the U.S. attacked Fallujah with massive bombs.”

GEORGE GALLOWAY: “Well you know in days to come, perhaps years to come, our children will learn of Fallujah in the way that previous generations learned of previous great war crimes. The destruction of Guernica by the fascist forces in the Spanish civil war. The destruction of Warsaw, for example, by the Nazis in Poland during the Second World War.

This destruction of Fallujah was a carefully prepared and clinically executed destruction. Brick by brick, of a whole city, a big city at that, to ash. And the killing of thousands of people, carelessly whether they were men, women, children, fighters, non-fighters. And then the leaving of their bodies to bloat in the sun in the streets, and on the first day of the end of Ramadan the dogs in Fallujah were eating the bodies in the streets.

Now very few people in America, or Britain for that matter, know anything about this. There were no journalists there, no Western journalists there. The news was controlled by the people besieging the city. But I can assure you that every Muslim in the world knows. Every Arab in the world knows, everything about it, and cares deeply and is moved hugely by this massacre that occurred in Fallujah.

The fact is there have been other Fallujah’s since on a smaller scale, smaller cities. There was one just in the last few days near the Syrian border where thousands of American soldiers; airplanes, tanks; destroyed brick by brick an Iraqi town. And it recalls the infamous words of the American commander in Vietnam who said, this village will have to be destroyed in order to save it. That’s what they are doing in Iraq. They are creating a desert and calling it “liberation” and this, of course, will blow back on the United States and on Great Britain and those involve in this grisly enterprise many times and in many places.

That’s the problem as I arrive here just in the wake of the anniversary of 9/11 our problem is that the blow back against these kinds of imperial cruelties now no longer is restricted to the Empire itself. The Empire strikes back and strikes us in a wicked and cruel and indiscriminate way like it did in London on the 7th of July when 52 entirely innocent people were punished for the crimes of the guilty people in Britain. I can assure you the guilty people in Britain don’t travel on buses or on the London underground. They are conveyed in quite a different way and these 52 who were killed were innocent people, who probably opposed the crimes of Bush and Blair, and yet they lost their lives and many others lost their limbs in the course of that terrorist atrocity.

This is our problem. The world is spinning dangerously out of control. We are making more and more people hate us around the world and that hatred blows back on us in unpredictable, asymmetrical, unfair, unjust, inexcusable ways, but that in turn feeds more violence. And the cycle of violence into which we appear to be locked is going to consume us all unless we pull out of it.

Smith: Let me just ask you for some advice for people who might be listening who are peace and justice activists who want to take on the local media, to go and share the realities of Iraq with various kinds of community radio people and members of the alternative press. How do you do it Mr. Galloway? When they ask you about your comments about Bush being a terrorist you come right back with the facts, you come right back in a way that challenges the reporter to come up with an explanation for their own question. And I’m just amazed, tell us, do you practice your way of dealing with the press?”

GEORGE GALLOWAY: “I don’t. But I have been doing it for a long time and practice makes perfect you know? Nobody can do these things right at the beginning. But the more that you do them the better you get if you are properly doing your job in a professional way. That’s the first piece of advice. We must approach our work as professionally as our enemies do. There is no excuse for sloppy work. There is no excuse for mistakes. For failure to deliver on deadlines and so on; we must approach our work with absolute professionalism. The same zeal with which our enemies prosecute their case. And secondly we must try to engage with the media that exists but we must try and develop our own media too. That’s why I must say I greatly admire the network of radio stations of which you are one because we simply don’t have that in Britain. In fact, it would be legally impossible for us to have it. You can’t have a political radio station unless of course it’s supporting the politics of the prevailing orthodoxy in which case you can get a license very easily.

But we do have to create our own radio stations, our own internet radio, our own web sites, our own alternative media of all kinds. So let a thousand flowers bloom. We have to participate in the media that we have. We have to generate our own media and we have to be very serious and brave about what we do. We’re right you know and we have the benefit of being right. We are doing what we do because it’s the right thing to do and that ought to give courage to even the most timid of our brothers and sisters.”

Smith: “Just explain the meaning and significance of your trip culminating on the 24th of September in Washington.”

GEORGE GALLOWAY: “It’s very important, the 24th of September, there will be demonstrations around the whole world, but I think the biggest demonstration in the whole world may be in the United States and needs to be in the United States.

First of all, the people of the United States have got to show the world that Bush is not acting in their name, and you can’t just say that, and sit at home, you have to show that. Otherwise why should anyone believe you? Why should the people under the bombardment in Fallujah believe that Bush is not acting in your name unless you are out on the street on the 24th of September demonstrating that that is so.

So I think the vital need for the demonstration on the 24th to be a gigantic, mammoth demonstration, is the number one purpose of my tour. Of course I want to shift books, of course I want to reach people through interviews like this, but it’s for a purpose and one of the principle purposes is to try to rally as many people as we possibly can on D.C. on the 24th for peace, against war, and to show the world that Bush does not speak for the majority of people in the United States.

Smith: “Mr. Galloway goes to Washington September 24th and you can too and we will be providing information on how to find buses and information about where these demonstrations will be across the country. George Galloway, thanks so much for joining us.”

GEORGE GALLOWAY: “Thank you very much indeed. It’s been a pleasure.”

Smith: George Galloway’s latest book is, “Mr. Galloway goes to Washington. You will find it at thenewpress.com and Amazon.com. And you will find the full testimony of George Galloway before the U.S. Senate at Information Clearing House

You can learn more about the Respect Party of London online For information about a debate between George Galloway and Christopher Hitchens, September 14th 2005, in New York, try this link Or, this link or Mr. Galloway Goes To Washington

Bill Dobbs of United for Peace and Justice joins us next to talk about events scheduled in the nation September 24th calling for an end to the war in Iraq. He will be filling us in mostly on events on the East Coast. Listeners on the west coast can log on to the web site of United For Peace for more information about events in their area.

BILL DOBBS: “We are planning three days of events in Washington, D.C. We also know that there are events in solidarity with this national protest in Washington. Those solidarity events are not only in cities around the country but in other countries as well. But down in D.C. all forms of transit are going to bring people from all over the East Coast and the West Coast, certainly plenty from Connecticut, and on Saturday there is going to be a rally, a march, there is going to be a free musical concert which will also have speakers including Cindy Sheehan.

All day long we will have a peace and justice festival. A large series of tents that will enable people who come to the protest to meet and connect with various facets of the anti-War movement, counter recruiting, military families, and veterans.

The next day, Sunday, we are going to have an interfaith service for peace. And on Monday there will be two different things. Some civil disobedience and non-violent direct action at the White House and there will also be some pre-arranged meetings with Congressional representatives to do some lobbying.

So we’ve got a full menu of things to enable people to express their opposition to this war.”

Smith: “Who are the organizers of this event and what kinds of expectations do people have about crowd size and just the general sentiment in America where people seem to definitely want this war to end?”

Bill Dobbs: “We are expecting a lot of people for this protest, and the “we” United for Peace and Justice, is the largest U.S. anti-War coalition. We were formed in October of 2002 and have expanded and added lots and lots of groups so that we are now 1200 plus groups, local organizing groups around the country, and also some regional and national groups belong to our coalition. Our web site, unitedforpeace.org is a treasure trove of information, not only about this mobilization, September 24th through 26th, but it has lots of information about the anti-War movement.

When this mobilization was planned back in the spring we had no idea that there would be so many developments over the summer that have given it a new urgency. And by that I mean the public opinion polls have turned solidly negative about the war so that a majority of the country is now standing with the peace movement, that’s very important.

Congressional sentiment has shifted and there is now a caucus of Congressional representatives called the “Out of Iraq Caucus.”

The Downing Street Memo, which was prepared for Tony Blair in Great Britain, about their participation in the war, has raised questions about the Bush Administration’s credibility. The news over the summer and continuing about what is going on in Iraq is very bad and there was one week where we had a number of soldiers from Ohio get killed. This really touched a chord in the United States. It set off a lot of stories. And I don’t want to leave out something very important which happened which was Cindy Sheehan was down in Texas and told a convention of veterans for peace members that it was time to go to Crawford. And the next day they set off for Crawford and the rest captured the attention of people all over this country and all over this world. So for all of those reasons there is a real surge of interest in stopping this war and bringing the troops home now and we expect well over a hundred thousand people in Washington just ten days or so from now.”

Smith: “We also saw that Cindy Sheehan had in fact gone to Louisiana. She wound up in Covington, Louisiana, to give up aid. Just talk about hurricane Katrina. The impact of the disaster we’ve seen and the fact that so many people like Cindy Sheehan went there immediately to see what they could do to help. And at the same time we saw a slow response from the White House and many reporters, surprising numbers of anchors from mainstream press outlets, were saying that a lot of the problem in the slow response had to do with the war in Iraq. Do you expect that that will swell the ranks in D.C. on September 24 too?

BILL DOBBS: Hurricane Katrina was a terrible natural disaster. It really hit people in the gut. And it left those who had the least in the most trouble. And, of course, the country is very embarrassed by the way that the Bush Administration responded to all of this. It captured a lot of people’s attention but it’s also caused many to connect what went on, the sluggish response, to the hurricane, with the war in Iraq. There is a lot of money and supplies and people in Iraq that could have been used for emergency preparedness and to deal with the disaster and help people but it’s been diverted to Iraq.

But in another way the disaster has also caused people to take another look at Bush Administration policies and now we see that people are not so willing to cut George Bush slack on Iraq and are asking much more insistently. Why are we still in Iraq? Why haven’t we brought the troops home now? The one aspect of the bus tours that left with Cindy Sheehan and other military family members and veterans is to pressure Congress. Congress has given the President authority to wage this war and Congress has the power to stop it and that’s the challenge of the peace movement right now to push Congress to stop this war.”

Smith: “Bill Dobbs of United for Peace and Justice is an organizer for a demonstration in Washington, D.C. September 24th. Here are the web sites for information about buses and events in Washington.

http://www.unitedforpeace.org
http://www.ctunitedforpeace.org
http://www.afsc.org/pwork/0509/050905.htm
http://www.bringthemhomenowtour.org
http://www.internationalanswer.org

For Talk Nation Radio, I’m Dori Smith. This program was produced in the studios of Listen Live to WHUS Radio Wed. at 5 PM.