Desk-bound Nature Lover

My Blog: Occasional postings about the joys of birding, hiking, camping, and sightseeing.

My life: I spend most of my days in offices, looking at a computer screen, and waiting for those few weekends when I can get out and enjoy some remnant of our precious natural heritage. But, boy, do I live on those weekends!

Monday, September 26, 2005

My New Hero, George Galloway

I think I have a new personal hero, and his name is George Galloway.

In my mind, a hero is someone who speaks the truth to power, especially if he does it fearlessly, forcefully, and eloquently. In these tragic times, when the Republican Party is transforming into a fascist party, the Democratic Party is supine, and the newspapers are acting more and more like the PR offices of their corporate owners, the need for heroes, for people who speak the truth to power, has never been more desperate.

George Galloway is a British Member of Parliament. He was a fierce critic of the Saddam Hussein regime in Iraq when the Reagan administration and the first Bush administration were still his allies, and he has been an opponent of the invasion of Iraq since it’s inception.

Being a critic of the Iraq war has made him a target. With the reckless disregard for truth which has become characteristic of Republicans, a number of scurrilous accusations were made against him by Republican politicians and their spokesmen in the corporate media. A rising star of the neoconservatives, Norm Coleman, summoned Mr Galloway before his Senate subcommitee to answer these acusations. (In case you don’t know what a neoconservative is, I will explain it. “Neoconservative” is what Fascists like to call themselves these days.) Mr Galloway eagarly accepted this summons and, in front of the cameras of the news media, had Senator Coleman for lunch.

Below is an excerpt of Mr Galloway’s statement. Click anywhere on the excerpt to be linked to the complete statement. Is is worth repeated reading, as a case study in the tactics which Republicans use to smear their opponents, as an eloquent indictement of this idiotic war, and as a beautiful example of how the English language can be used for a good cause.

“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.

“I told the world that Iraq, contrary to your claims did not have weapons of mass destruction. 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 paid with their lives; 1600 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 Chirac 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 that we are in today.”


If only Kerry or Gore had had the backbone to say such things! It makes me wish British citizens could run for U.S. President.

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