in on over 300 radio and television
stations around the country Pacifica and
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stations and on both T satellite TV
networks Dish Network channel 9415 Free
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as well Channel 375 we're also
broadcasting uh video and audio
streaming at democracynow.org um the
elections in Iraq have been held as a
resounding success both by President
Bush and British Prime Minister Tony
Blair in a brief statement from 10
Downing Street Blair said quote
democracy in Iraq is not just good for
Iraq itself it's also a blow right to
the heart of the global terrorism that
threatens destruction not just in Iraq
but in Britain and virtually every major
country in the world not all British
government officials feel the same way
Scottish MP George Galloway has been one
of the most vocal critics of the Iraq
War he was expelled by his own ruling
party uh the labor party in October 200
three after he was accused of
encouraging British troops to disobey
what he called illegal orders well
yesterday I was in England in Ireland as
part of the international exception to
the rulers book tour with my colleague
democ now producer Elizabeth press uh
yesterday in London we bumped into
George Galloway outside of BBC Studios
and asked him about his thoughts on the
Iraqi elections they're a farce they're
rigged an election held under foreign
military occupation is always by
definition uh utterly flawed but one
which is held in the kind of conditions
in which this one is being held uh is
flawed Beyond Redemption the facts are
that it is simply impossible to hold an
election when there's a full scale war
going on between the occupying armies
and the resistance forces the Sunni
Muslim population which if you add the
Sunni Kurds and the Sunni Arabs together
some 40% of the population are deeply uh
anxious about the way in which the
occupying forces are deliberately trying
to divide the country along uh
confessional lines the Sunni Arab
population has boycotted the election
almost in their uh entirety the Iraqis
living outside for whom security was not
an issue three quarters of them have
voted with their feet and boycotted the
election less than a quarter of the
eligible voters have registered to vote
and fewer still have cast their votes so
this is uh a festival uh a farce that's
been held to validate the American
British Invasion and occupation of Iraq
uh but it will not validate it neither
in the eyes of the world opinion uh nor
more importantly in the eyes of those
Iraqis who are resisting the foreign
occupation and the war will go on I'm
sorry to say so what do you see is going
to happen and what are you calling for
well there's a very great danger of what
I call the Yugoslav isation of Iraq uh
the petrifying of the population on
ethnic and confessional lines uh and the
country beginning a process of breaking
up into three
irqs which is pregant with many uh real
dangers for the surrounding countries uh
not just Arab countries but turkey and
Iran uh and uh which could very well
lead to fighting over oil resources and
a spreading of the configuration which
already exists there we have a very
simple demand we say that the two uh
leaders who caused this disaster cannot
possibly be a part of its solution Bush
and Blair and their forces will have to
go from Iraq that's an absolute
precondition for any resolution of this
conflict and they must talk with the
resistance about how they're going to do
that over what period of time it' have
to be a short period of time uh but I'm
sure it could be organized by agreement
with the resistance forces that sounds
far today but it will one day have to be
agreed just like the American uh forces
had to withdraw from Vietnam so the
American and British forces will have to
withdraw from
Iraq and what about the population in
Britain now and what about today here we
are at the BBC hearing all day the
voices of people talking about going to
vote and how exhilarated they are well
uh we would like all the people of the
Arab world to be able to go and vote in
Democratic elections
that's why if we'd been alive uh we
would have opposed the British and
French and other European colonization
of Arab countries where incidentally
there was never a single election held
that could remotely be described as a
free and fair election and it's why
we're against all the dictatorships in
the Arab world who rule the Arab world
almost without exception from the
Atlantic to the gulf mostly with the
full support of Britain and the United
States and we want Democratic elections
in Iraq too but these are not Democratic
elections and these elections will solve
nothing and may even add to the problems
but in Britain now uh 29% of the
population support the Iraq War uh down
from something like 68% at the height of
the fighting and the fall of the regime
in Baghdad that's a pretty spectacular
fall and it will fall further still
finally was at the times of London which
newspaper settled with you and
apologized well how long have you got
all of them have settled and apologized
um the Del Telegraph is the one I think
you refer to which was my biggest
Victory they had to pay me £50,000 in
Damages and 1.6 million in Damages why
uh because they falsely claimed that I
was in the pay of the Saddam Hussein
dictatorship the same kind of smear uh
utterly baseless gigantic smear that
they leveled at so many sections of the
anti-war movement what they can't take
you see is that we were right and they
were wrong they were the bugle blowers
for one of the most disastrous foreign
polc policy decisions ever taken by
Britain or America uh and I was amongst
those who was telling them uh that this
is going to end precisely in the way
that it has ended and they don't uh they
don't like that your comment on the
latest uh we know about the abug gra
prison scandal from US soldiers um you
have your own scandal with British
soldiers and then the Guantanamo Refuge
the Guantanamo prisoners returning home
here to Britain
well you see the Ironclad consensus of
the mainstream political parties the
front benches and the BBC and the other
mainstream media Outlets uh like to uh
reassure each other that this is conduct
unrepresentative of British occupation
forces but I'm sorry to tell you it's
entirely representative when Britain
suppressed the Mau Freedom struggle in
Kenya they killed a 100,000 Kenyans
almost exactly the same number of Iraqis
have been killed in the war and
occupation they used to cut off the
limbs of kikuyu tribes people and pin
them to the wall and take photographs of
them uh they used to pay British
soldiers £5 per body for kikuyu that
they brought in uh in Malay Mala when we
crushed the Malayan Revolt for Freedom
we killed 10,000 Mala I've seen pictures
of British soldiers holding the severed
heads of Malay uh people uh for the camp
ceras this is how all occupations end
these things don't happen because the
soldiers in question are American or
British anymore than uh General shon's
Army behaves as it does because it's
Israeli still less because it's Jewish
they behave like that because they're
occup occupying armies and all
occupations end this way they end in the
demonization the
subhuman of the occupied people a belief
in the inherent superiority of the
occupying forces otherwise why should we
be there reorganizing their societies
and that inevitably leads when you're
dealing with 17 19 21y old young men
with uh Weaponry against helpless
civilian populations it always ends in
an abug grab British MP George Galloway
we were speaking yesterday in London
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