A Scottish laddie goes to Washington ...

... I speak, in this instance, of the Member of Parliament for Bethnal Green and Bow, George 'gorgeous' Galloway, who today gave what was described by a commentator on BBC News24 as a 'mesmerising' performance, during his appearance under oath before a US Senate committee. A pretty accurate description, I'd say.

Over the course of the past year or two I've had occasion to mention the name of George Galloway a few times. He is not one of my favourite people. However, there is no denying the fact that he gave a pretty good account of himself. Whether any of the allegations that the Senate committee have made have substance is completely unknown to me, but the performances of the three principal participants today (US Senators Norm Coleman (R), the committee chairman, and Carl Levin (D) - read about them here, and George Galloway himself) were strikingly different. George was his usual strident self, although I believe he retained his composure and showed an acceptable level of courtesy throughout.

Interestingly, after the session had ended, I saw Sen Coleman give a brief interview when he blustered that Mr Galloway has 'little credibility' and warned him that the consequences of lying before a Senate committee 'could be serious', implying one supposes that this is what he thinks Mr Galloway may have done.

I have little liking for Mr Galloway, or what he stands for, and I continue to believe that the toppling from power of Saddam Hussein was sufficient justification in itself for our military action in Iraq, whatever 'international law' may have to say about it, and however cack-handed(*) may have been some of the actions of the coalition in Iraq after Saddam Hussein was toppled. Nevertheless my impression is that this particular US Senate committee did not show itself in a particularly impressive light today, when faced with someone who declined to roll over and be mugged by the (what should be) impressive majesty of a staid US Senate committee, but whose principal members did not seem to have the facts to hand to back up their allegations; this applies specially to Sen Norm Coleman, the Republican chairman of the committee.

(*) - as a matter of interest this writer is himself left-handed, so no disrespect is intended toward the 'sinistrals' amongst us; as someone alluded to 'political correctness' in commenting on one of my recent posts, I thought I should just mention this for the record.