The truth too late

George Galloway, the antiwar member of Parliament who was given the boot on the basis of phony documents published in the Telegraph, has won a libel suit.

The Telegraph did me and the anti-war movement an injustice and the judge held it to account. But the Blair government - which used the Telegraph's assault to force me out of a Labour party I'd served for 36 years - has committed an incomparably greater injustice. Iraq was invaded on trumped-up charges. As a result, an estimated 100,000 Iraqis have died; the lives of millions more have been wrecked. This week we learned the conditions of child health in a land occupied are now even worse than during the killing years of sanctions. Yet not a single government minister has fallen. No official has been sacked.

[...]

The Telegraph, a chief cheerleader for the Iraq war, together with the media empire of another foreign press baron, Rupert Murdoch, tried to paint me as a treasonous "enemy of the state", and the anti-war movement as the "enemy within". But the real enemies of the state are the political leaders, pre-eminently the prime minister, who deceived the country into a disastrous military adventure which has devastated a foreign land and disfigured the face of international affairs. And the real enemies within are the pusillanimous poodles in parliament and press who allowed, and are still allowing them, to get away with it.

[...]

Now the stain on my name has been removed, I intend to step up my efforts, with others both inside and outside parliament, to harry and hold to account those responsible for the crimes of the Iraq war.

YWA wishes you godspeed and great fortune in your efforts, Mr. Galloway.

George Galloway is Respect MP for Glasgow Kelvin and a columnist for the Scottish Mail on Sunday

gallowayg@parliament.uk

James Wolcott comments:

The judge who ruled in Galloway's favor--a wise Solomon named Justice Eady--rejected the Telegraph's defense that its smears against the rebel MP were in the bounds of rough political discourse. He wrote in his judgment, "Allegations of 'treason' are not part and parcel of the knocks one expects to take in the course of everyday political debate."

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Well, maybe not in England.

And why don't we have any politicians in this country making the same roar?

Cowardly, and corrupt.

George Galloway's inspired speech on being kicked out of Parliament is transcribed here.