The truth? In the Senate?

The Senate’s Permanent Subcom mit tee on Investigations—a collection of warmongers from both parties—is not looking into crime and graft involving the U.S. government and its favorite monopolies. Instead it has been poking around in the so-called Oil-for-Food Program, begun in 1996.

From 1990 to 1996, sanctions against Iraq caused the death of over a million Iraqis—half of them children under the age of five. The subcommittee is not investigating the U.S. presidents and officials—first Republicans, then Democrats—who enforced this program and were responsible for these deaths. The subcommittee is not investigating Madeleine Albright, who as secretary of state defended the death of the children as “worth it.”

The subcommittee is not investigating the U.S. officials who kept drinkable water from Iraqis.

No. What the committee is doing is sniffing around the program and trying to blame the UN, French and Russian politicians, and anyone else who objected in one way or another to the U.S. invasion of Iraq or to the sanctions.

On May 17 the committee called in British Member of Parliament George Galloway, a veteran opponent of U.S.-British policy toward Iraq. Galloway just won election against a Tony Blair crony. Galloway ran on the newly formed Respect Party ticket after Labor expelled him for his anti-war activism.

The “evidence” the committee has produced against Galloway is based on forged documents claiming he profited off Iraqi oil. Two years ago Galloway won libel suits against two major
newspapers that based stories on these documents.

The British MP is characterizing the current Senate investigation as an attempt to divert attention from U.S. crimes in Iraq with “the mother of all smokescreens.”

Then he told the committee: “Have a look at the real oil for food scandal. Have a look at the 14 months you were in charge of Baghdad when $8.8 billion of Iraq’s wealth went missing on your watch.

“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.”

Galloway’s indictment of the war and all who condoned it was a breath of fresh air in the Senate.