This was a really interesting exchange between Greg Sheridan and Labour MP George Galloway on Australian TV last night.  Galloway doesn't know who Sheridan is, but we locals do. For decades Sheridan has been Australia's most ardent media champion for the Indonesian dictatorship. He defended the Indonesian military occupation of East Timor to the very last. Public opinion in Australia was virtually unanimously in favour of the Australian intervention in East Timor, but Sheridan ranted against the Howard government on that issue. Basically, he's on the right-wing fringe of Australian politics.

I really enjoyed watching George Galloway tear him to pieces. Which he did, though it isn't quite as obvious in the transcript. But watching the body language it was more clear, he made Sheridan look like an incoherent banshee. Onya George!

Bill Bartlett
Bracknell Tas

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Australian Broadcasting Corporation
LATELINE
Late night news & current affairs

TV PROGRAM TRANSCRIPT
LOCATION: abc.net.au > Lateline > Archives URL: http://www.abc.net.au/lateline/s646835.htm


Broadcast: 12/8/2002
British MP meets with Hussein
British Labour MP George Galloway met with the Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein in one of his secret bunkers last Thursday - an opportunity not granted to many Western politicians.

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Compere: Tony Jones
Reporter: Tony Jones

Last Thursday, the maverick British Labour MP George Galloway met with the Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein in one of his secret bunkers.

An opportunity not granted to many Western politicians in recent years, but Galloway has long been a vociferous opponent of sanctions against Iraq and has described his proudest achievement as having "stood firmly against the new imperialism and Anglo-American aggression around the world".

George Galloway joins us from London on a day when the Labor Party in Australia has raised its political rhetoric against the Howard Government's frank and open endorsement of regime change in Iraq.

Also joining me in Sydney is the Australian's columnist Greg Sheridan, who recently found himself fiercely defending the Howard Government's position on Iraq.

George Galloway first to you, Saddam Hussein doesn't have too many friends in the world at the moment. Do you count yourself as one of them?

GEORGE GALLOWAY, BRITISH LABOUR MP: Actually I think he has more friends than you think, he has many friends in the Arab world and that's why the Arab regimes very friendly Western regimes - Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan and others desperately running around trying to dissuade Mr Bush from taking us over this cliff because they know their own population will rise up in response to any Western aggression.

He has a lot of friends among the 1.3 billion Muslims in the world, which is a quarter of the entire world's population.

So I don't think you should discount these two facts. But I'm not one of his hands, as it happens. I never visited Iraq before the Gulf War and I wouldn't have been welcome if I had, as a known opponent of the Iraqi regime.

But I am a friend of the 23 million Iraqis who are not Saddam Hussein who have lost one million of their children through embargo over the last 12 years and may now be facing a massive invasion, which will kill thousands, perhaps tens of thousands of innocent Iraqi civilians.

TONY JONES: Alright, well, now you've managed to do what very few Western politicians, if any, have managed to do, in the past decade, you've met the dictator face-to-face.

Now what did he tell you would be the consequences of a US-led invasion of his country?

GEORGE GALLOWAY: Western politicians haven't met him because they have not been prepared to do so.

Although we saw in the week when I was in Baghdad, British foreign office Minister kissing Colonel Gaddafi, despite the role of Gaddafi in financing IRA terrorism in London, blowing up the Lockerbie airliner, shooting dead a police woman in a London street.

We can kiss Gaddafi, but we can't talk to the Iraqi Government. Even on the brink of making a devastating war with them. That doesn't seem sensible to me.

But you should be clear that Iraq is determined about two things. It's determined to pursue the diplomatic moves that it has recently announced which do provide, I believe a diplomatic way out of the impasse, but it's determined if the United States and if there are Australian forces with them very ill-advisedly with them, but if they're with them, that they'll face very fierce resistance.

It will be a war from street to street, from house to house and rooftop to rooftop.

TONY JONES: So he told you there would be no more fighting in the desert, that he would withdraw his main forces to the cities and fight in the cities to make it harder?

GEORGE GALLOWAY: He didn't tell me that. But this is very widely understood in military circles and in intelligence circles and I think it's logical.

Iraq will not sit in the desert and wait to be saturation bombed. It will withdraw to its heartland and it will be a war of the cities, up close and personal and a lot of people will die.

And in the age of Arab satellite television, every picture of a burning building in an Iraqi city with ribbons of civilians being swept out and the broken bodies of the people killed in the bombing are carried out, the lava which will flow on to the streets of the Arab capitals will be a human lava, imperilling our very best friends in the region.

TONY JONES: Alright, let me bring Greg Sheridan in now if I can. How many projected US and civilian casualties would it take before the US Generals decided that an invasion was not on?

GREG SHERIDAN, JOURNALIST, THE AUSTRALIAN: Well, that's an impossible question, Tony. No-one could...

TONY JONES: But it's a question that planners are thinking about all the time. They project body counts.

GREG SHERIDAN: They might be. Oddly enough they haven't confided their inner most plans to me. If I could take up some of George's points. I mean, if his prognostications are as foolish and inaccurate as his factual recounting, then we've got nothing to worry about at all.

He says one million Iraqi children have been lost through the sanctions, that of course is rubbish. You only have to go to Kurdistan in Iraq, which is a part of Iraq also subject to the sanctions, but where normal life has gone on very well.

Now I notice a Blair Government foreign office Minister called Mr Galloway a mouthpiece and an apologist for Saddam Hussein.

I must say I think the Blair Government is probably pretty much...

GEORGE GALLOWAY: He had to come back to the house and apologise. Why don't you add that point.

GREG SHERIDAN: You swallow all Saddam Hussein's propaganda.

GEORGE GALLOWAY: Why don't you tell the viewers that he had to come back to the house and apologise for that?

TONY JONES: George Galloway, you've got the floor. Would you like to make that point?

GREG SHERIDAN: Don't go off your medication, George.

GEORGE GALLOWAY: The Minister had to return to the dispatch box in the house, withdraw those words and apologise for using them and your guest should do the same.

GREG SHERIDAN: I am very concerned for your welfare and my primary advice to you would be don't go off your medication. But your strategic advice in regards to Iraq is complete rubbish.

All this nonsense about the Arab street, every time the US or anybody else is going to take any decisive action anywhere, we hear the Arabs streets will rise up and crush us all.


In fact what we've found is when the US operates effectively and is successful, the Arab street is very quiet because they respect the decisive use of power. What would be disastrous would be for the Bush Administration to continue to equivocate and do nothing and let this generally royal away.

TONY JONES: Greg Sheridan, can I put to you though the point that was just made by George Galloway - that is, this would not be an easy war by any stretch of the imagination, it would not be like the last Gulf War at all. The troops would bring themselves back into the city, they'd fight fight street to street. Do you expect it wouldn't be a war like that?

GREG SHERIDAN: I do. Let me tell you, the New York Times said about Afghanistan, you know, it's not going to be like Iraq was last time. It's not going to be easy.

Then of course in military terms it was remarkably easy. Now they're saying about Iraq won't be like Afghanistan was, it's going to be tough.

Now I think there's a very good chance if you said to Saddam Hussein's Generals, look you've got two choices; you can die a martyr's death for the glory and honour of Saddam Hussein, that great man and philanthropist or you can go and live in a safe house in Saudi Arabia and take your holidays in Hawaii, it's up to you.

You know what, I think quite a lot of them would choose the latter course and not fight for him.

TONY JONES: Alright, let me bring George Galloway back in. You've heard the position, this is a position that's echoed in Washington, it has echoed in London and also in Australia.

GEORGE GALLOWAY: I don't know if this is normal discourse in Australia, but I've now been call a mouthpiece, an apologist and a psychiatric patient who should keep taking my medication. I am not used to that kind of rudeness and I don't tend to respond to it.

TONY JONES: It isn't normal discourse, George Galloway. And no, we will ask Greg Sheridan if he can actually tone it down a bit in fact.

GREG SHERIDAN: It was your Blair Government, Minister.

GEORGE GALLOWAY: I understood this was a serious program and I think we should deal with these deadly serious issues without personal abuse.

GREG SHERIDAN: It was in the British Parliament, it was the assessment of a British Government minister of you George, it was not my assessment.

TONY JONES: Alright, let's let George make a point.

GEORGE GALLOWAY: We should deal with the serious issues here. There's going to be a quarter of a million Western soldiers who will be seen in the Muslim world as Western crusaders, landing in an Arab country and fighting whatever resistance there is there and then occupying the country and garrisoning the Parliament and then keeping that puppet Government in power.

Your viewers will have seen the difficulty that General Sharon has in occupying a very small piece of territory with a very small population, most of them unarmed.

There are many Iraqis who hate Saddam Hussein, but there are many Iraqis who don't. This latter point is consistently underestimated - I happen to know that on the Iraqi street, especially in the Sunni heartland - because I know them, I've spoken to them many, many times - they will fight to defend their country against foreign invasion.

Your other guest can sneer cynically about people taking their holidays in Hawaii and safe houses in Saudi Arabia. I hope we don't get the opportunity to test his cynicism. If we do, it will mean that thousands are already dead and thousands more may yet die.

GREG SHERIDAN: Thousands are already dead. Thousands of Kurds have been murdered by Saddam Hussein. Thousands of Iranians have been gassed by Saddam Hussein.

If we don't take this action, hundreds of thousands may die at the hands of nuclear weapons wielded by Saddam Hussein.

TONY JONES: Do you have any doubt, George Galloway, that Saddam Hussein, if his back were against the wall, if it really looked like the Americans this time were out to destroy him and his regime, would he use weapons of mass destruction that he still holds?

GEORGE GALLOWAY: Well, in a way the West is in a double bind over this. If the Iraqis have these weapons - which they claim are the justification for the invasion - it goes without saying that those weapons will be used, because this is the last battle for the government in Iraq and it's a zero-sum game.

GREG SHERIDAN: Do you believe they have these weapons?

GEORGE GALLOWAY: If they don't have, then the justification for the invasion simply disappears.

GREG SHERIDAN: Do they have those?

GEORGE GALLOWAY: To answer the question which is so rudely being hurled at me as I'm speaking, the best way to decide whether or not they have these weapons is to accept their offer to send the UN arms inspectors back to Baghdad.

I can show you the most conservative newspaper in Britain the front page today - two out of three British voters oppose war on Iraq.

Now I believe that that public upon, which is so decisively shifted in Britain, is also shifting across the world, in favour of going an extra mile for a peaceful and diplomatic solution to this.

I can't see why anyone has to lose from that. I hope that sensible people at least go along with that.

TONY JONES: Let me put the main point to you, Greg. Is it appeasement to wait and give weapons inspectors to go and have at least a last effort to root out the weapons of mass destruction if there are any.

GREG SHERIDAN: I didn't realise Scotsmen were tender in debate these days. Bill Clinton's assistant secretary of state said Saddam Hussein will try to spring an inspections trap on the West.

He will say "come in and do your inspections", and he won't allow a proper, effective regime of inspections to be carried out.

It may well be that the four years with no inspections this which Saddam Hussein has flouted the UN resolutions and the terms of the cease-fire, he has hidden his weapons of mass destruction in a way that they can't be found.

The very best assessment by the most disinterested people is that this would simply be a trap for the West to delay us while he procured and George still hasn't told us whether he believes Saddam Hussein has weapons of mass destruction.

TONY JONES: George Galloway?

GEORGE GALLOWAY: I suspect Martin Indyk would find it amusing to be described as disinterested. He is a man who used to be the head of the pro-Israel lobby on the Hill in Washington.

He's a former American ambassador to Israel. He's one of the most hawkish, most pro-zionist politicians in America. Of course he would be saying things that your guest is saying.

TONY JONES: What about this critical question - do you think that Saddam Hussein really does have weapons of mass destruction and can weapons inspectors root them out?

GEORGE GALLOWAY: Why is that a critical question? Your viewers don't know me. My opinion is of no value whatsoever. The only opinion of value is an inspector's value.

That's why having spent years Iraq, let the inspectors back in we've now got people like your guest - I'm sorry I've never heard of him before, so I can't tell you his name - for years we've demanded that the inspectors be let in and now they've been invited in they've moved the goal posts.

Your guest and people like him and your Prime Minister, they want war because war is a means by which they can follow the right-wing political agenda, carving up the world in a kind of new imperialist age.

TONY JONES: We're just about to lose your satellite. Thank you for joining us tonight and thank you too to Greg Sheridan.

GEORGE GALLOWAY: Thank you.

GREG SHERIDAN: Thank you.