“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,
“Senator, in everything I said about Iraq, I turned out to be right and you turned out to be wrong. And 100,000 people have paid with their lives — 1,600 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.”
“Senator, this is the mother of all smokescreens. You are trying to divert attention from the crimes that you supported.”
Now, I’m not really a member of the George Galloway fan club – I was all in favour of his militant anti-war stance, am still very confused by his ‘I salute your indefatiguability’ speech to Saddam, and don’t trust his new Respect part at all. That said, his speech to the US Senate committee investigating claims that Saddam gave him shedloads of oil to sell was fantastic – the quote above is just a small part of it, quoted from this article on CNN.com. I’d love to see the video footage…
Soundtrack – a minidisc of a gig I did at the Barbican back in 2003, with Orphy Robinson, Mano Ventura and Filomena Campus, that I’ve never listened to before – the disc was lost under a pile of stuff, so today’s bit of tidying unearthed it. Bits of it are fantastic. There’s easily 20 minutes of editable top notch stuff. I might have to have a go some time!