Journalist Johann Hari poses 15 questions to a supporter of George Galloway.
If you are ever confronted by somebody who supports George Galloway or
has any sympathy for him, here are 15 questions to put to them:
(1) Do you believe Saddam Hussein's genocidal assaults on the Kurds, democrats and Marsh Arabs in 1991 were "a civil war with massive
violence on both sides"?
(2) Would you go on holiday with the foreign minister of a fascist state?
(3) Would you go disco dancing with the foreign minister of a fascist state?
(4) Would you call for the release of the former foreign minister of a fascist state on the grounds that he is "an eminent diplomatic and intellectual person"?
(5) Do you believe Iraqi trade unionists today are "quislings"? Would you dismiss their tearful recollections of torture at the hands of Ba'athists by calling it "a party trick"?
(6) When told about Saddam Hussein's seven palaces in a country where people are "dropping like flies", would you respond by saying, "Our own head of state has a fair bit of real estate herself"?
(7) Do you believe Saddam Hussein is "likely to have been the leader in history who came closest to creating a truly Iraqi national identity, and he developed Iraq and the living, health, social and education standards of his own people"?
(8 ) Do you believe Fidel Castro is "not a dictator, not at all"?
(9) Do you believe the Charity Commission leads "politically inspired witch-hunts"? Do you think it is reasonable that the Mariam Appeal documents have never been handed over for investigation, and are somewhere in an undisclosed location in Jordan where they cannot be viewed?
(10) Do you believe Tony Blair is "waging war on Muslims both at home and abroad", that he is " a crusader", and "he will burn in the hellfires for all eternity"? If so, would you say so in areas of extreme racial tension to audiences of young and angry Muslim men?
(11) Do you believe the Shi'ites Saddam murdered in the 1980s were often "a fifth column" who "actively undermined the Iraqi war effort in the interests of
their country's enemy"?
(12) Do you think it is "unreasonable" to ask a member of parliament to live on less than £150,000 a year?
(13) Would you describe yourself as "a Stalinist" if it didn't "make a rod for my own back"?
(14) Was the day the Soviet Union fell "the worst day of your life"?
(15) When you found out there had been a coup in Pakistan, was your response to declare, "In poor third world countries like Pakistan, politics is too
important to be left to petty squabbling politicians. Pakistan is always on the brink of breaking apart into its widely disparate components. Only the armed forces can really be counted on to hold such a country together ... Democracy is a means, not an end in itself"?
If the answer to any of these questions is no, why don't you oppose George Galloway?
