The Galloway Affair. What to make of gentleman George Galloway's political plight is hard to say indeed. As The Scotsman paints it, the pugilistic MP is in a corner and going down for the count, with the crowd heckling for his blood. It's a dicy situation, with bitterness all around:
Well, it was an ironic and scandalous discovery, to be sure, and, as they say, would be interesting, if true. But the whole story stank of of being too neat by half. The reporter's incredibly serendipitous find was not impossible, of course -- Anything is possible, as prosecutors like to sneer -- but it was, well, suspicious. But the stampede to draw and quarter Galloway was on. Most recently he is being suspended from his Labour Party post, which makes it nigh impossible for him to stand for relection, keep his well-paying newspaper column going and cover the costs of fighting a libel case he has promised against the Telegraph and the three simultaneous investigations that have been launched into allegations he accepted 375,000 English pounds from Iraq's oil-for-food program for services rendered and was disloyal in statements he reportedly made about British fighting forces.
The whole thing reeks of implausibly good luck for Tony Blair and other war-backers. But Britain is Over There and we are Only Here, so we must defer to the judgments of those closest to the scene and the facts. Still, like other politically handy, fortuitous finds, it stinks.
Mr Galloway will now have to draw on all his skills as a charmer and politician if he is to survive the months of investigations and legal battles. It spoke volumes yesterday about the depth and rapidity of his decline that the only person who could be found to back publicly the renegade MP was Bob Crow, the hardline leader of the RMT union, who has adopted the motto of Millwall Football Club: "No-one likes us we don?t care."When the story first broke that a reporter for the conservative London Daily Telegraph had just happened to stoop over and,pick up -- What ho! -- documents blowing about a looted Baghdadi ministry which royally incriminated Parliament's most outspoken anti-war liberal as a paid stooge for Saddam Hussein.
Well, it was an ironic and scandalous discovery, to be sure, and, as they say, would be interesting, if true. But the whole story stank of of being too neat by half. The reporter's incredibly serendipitous find was not impossible, of course -- Anything is possible, as prosecutors like to sneer -- but it was, well, suspicious. But the stampede to draw and quarter Galloway was on. Most recently he is being suspended from his Labour Party post, which makes it nigh impossible for him to stand for relection, keep his well-paying newspaper column going and cover the costs of fighting a libel case he has promised against the Telegraph and the three simultaneous investigations that have been launched into allegations he accepted 375,000 English pounds from Iraq's oil-for-food program for services rendered and was disloyal in statements he reportedly made about British fighting forces.
The whole thing reeks of implausibly good luck for Tony Blair and other war-backers. But Britain is Over There and we are Only Here, so we must defer to the judgments of those closest to the scene and the facts. Still, like other politically handy, fortuitous finds, it stinks.
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