Norman!

The distinguished Senator whom Attaturk fondly refers to as "Asshat," gets his...er...hat handed to him.

In a defiant performance on Capitol Hill, the new MP for Bethnal Green and Bow accused the committee of traducing his own reputation and mounting "the mother of all smokescreens" to hide the real scandal - that Americans had plundered billions of dollars of Iraqi wealth.

The subcommittee, chaired by Norm Coleman, the Minnesota Republican, had alleged that Mr Galloway used a charity he established in 1998 to channel funds from allocations of 20 million barrels from 2000 to 2003.

"I am not now nor have I ever been an oil trader and neither has anyone on my behalf," Mr Galloway said.

"I was an opponent of Saddam Hussein when British and American governments and businessmen were selling him guns and gas."

Mr Galloway, who appeared in front of the committee voluntarily and testified under oath, used his opening statement to attack the allegations made against him in a dossier that he said was full of errors.

"On the very first page of your document about me, you assert that I have had many meetings with Saddam Hussein. This is false," Mr Galloway said.

"I have had two meetings with Saddam Hussein, once in 1994 and once in August 2002. By no stretch of the English language can that be described as many meetings. In fact I've met him exactly the same number of times as Donald Rumsfeld met him. The difference is that Donald Rumsfeld met him to sell him guns and to give him maps the better to target those guns."

He selected Mr Coleman as the focus of his wrath, adding: "You have nothing on me, Senator, except my name on lists of names from Iraq, many of which have been drawn up after the installation of your puppet government in Iraq.

"Now I know that standards have slipped over the last few years in Washington, but for a lawyer, you are remarkably cavalier with any idea of justice."

Meanwhile...

The US turned a blind eye to the former Iraq regime's $8bn trade in smuggled oil, a new US Senate report says.

The report says the US was well aware of both the smuggling and the kickbacks Iraq solicited from players in the UN's oil-for-food programme.

Wait. There's more.

Yesterday's report contains documents that bolster previous allegations that the State Department and the U.S.-led naval force may have assisted efforts by a key ally, Jordan, to smuggle $53 million worth of oil from Iraq in seven supertankers in the weeks before the invasion of Iraq.

"The United States not only failed to exert an effort to stop the oil tanker shipments, it appears to have facilitated them, despite widespread recognition that the shipments were a blatant violation of U.N. sanctions," the report states.

Levin said the State Department and the Pentagon "have denied" the committee's requests for information and failed to "provide answers to our questions." Levin and Coleman, meanwhile, are considering issuing a subpoena to compel testimony by a senior U.S. naval officer who was responsible for interdicting oil smugglers in the Persian Gulf. They are also pressing the State Department to allow a U.S. diplomat who allegedly approved one of the oil shipments to testify.

Norman! Your mother's calling you.