Galloway wins; Hari huffs. posted by Richard Seymour

George Galloway has won his libel case against the Telegraph. I am told that, aside from condemning the Telegraph, the judge also described the story as an attack on the antiwar movement - which is exactly what it was.

Johann Hari, however, is upset . Peeved, you might say. Astonishingly, he takes the opportunity to reprint falsehoods - which he knows are false, because he has read my lengthy rebuttal .

For instance, he reproduces the following:

How about the passage where Galloway defends Saddam's claim to Kuwait, describing the province as "clearly a part of the greater Iraqi whole stolen from the motherland by perfidious Albion"? What about the fact that Galloway repeatedly refers to Saddam's statements and actions as coming from "the Iraqis", as if Saddam was their legitimate representative rather than their oppressor? For example, he says that in the First Gulf War, "I made my stand with Iraq." No you didn't, George. You stood with Saddam; conscript Iraqis - most in their teens - were being sent to be slaughtered in the name of an invasion they did not support.

Unto which:

This is a blatant - and I must conclude intentional - misrepresentation. Here is Galloway's actual quote:


"For Iraqis of all political persuasions, Kuwait had been stolen from the motherland by perfidious Albion - Great Britain, the former colonial power." (Page 42).


He does not describe "the province" thus - he describes Iraqis as having that perception. Galloway could be wrong in this assessment, but that is immaterial since he did not say what Hari says he did. In fact, Hari seems to be the one in doubt of Kuwait's legitimacy as a nation, since he is the one who describes it as a "province". (Province: "A territory governed as an administrative or political unit of a country or empire." ) What can Johann mean?

Follow the links for more. Galloway 1 - Pro-war Left 0.