Dear Shakey
It's just as well you are hiding behind another name or Galloway would want to have a word or two with you!

When he arrived at the US Senate committee some time ago the senators thought they were going to devour him up as in one of those McCarthyite hearings from the 1950s.Galloway made mincemeat of them.

When it came to the war Galloway was pilloried,harassed and put through a Labour Party show trial and purged. A member of the Labour Party for 36 years he was thrown out after a kangaroo trial.

At that trial he was defended with evidence and statements by Tony Benn ,Michael Foot the former leader of the Labour Party,Mark Seddon a member of its National Executive and Tony Woodley the secretary of the Transport And General Workers Union .

He was expelled by party functionaries acting on orders from the top for one reason only.He had to be punished for speaking out articulately and forcefully against the coming war which he said would be illegal and a disaster.He was supported by an anti war movement of millions across the world which must have given him strength.

He was correct.The war which has cost the lives of hundreds of thousands of people was started by a most brutish right wing republican president aided and abetted by liars ,deceivers and servile opportunists in the heart of New Labour.

If Galloway's opposition to the war makes him a "scumbag" to use your disgraceful description we needed a few hundred others like him when the decision to invade was taken.

As for Respect,it is a coalition opposed to the war, opposed to the attack on our civil liberties and the whole mania for privatisation and the free market which has seen in the past few weeks huge sums of money being spent on the war and corrupt arms sales to Saudi Arabia ,for example ,while flood defences along the river Severn have ben neglected,underfunded and environmental workers sacked!

So many responsible for the mass murder and carnage in Iraq and Galloway gets called a "scumbag".You couldn't make it up!
ifor