THE PARALLELS CONTINUE: In the

THE PARALLELS CONTINUE: In the run-up to Gulf War II, I’d commented and linked to comments on the historical parallels between the anti-war movement and the nuclear freeze protests of the early eighties. Well, another one is emerging — the financial link between these protest movements and totalitarian dictatorships. There’s evidence that the nuclear freeze movement received some funding from the Soviet government (click here and here). Now it turns out that The Mariam Appeal — a prominent British anti-war group that opposed Operation Iraqi Freedom and is headed by Labor MP George Galloway — received funds from Saddam Hussein. Andrew Sullivan has been all over this. The Daily Telegraph broke the story a few days ago. The Guardian provides some supporting analysis. Galloway has denied receiving funds but admits that intermediaries who worked for him may have done so. The Christian Science Monitor now buttresses the original story with additional evidence:

A fresh set of documents uncovered in a Baghdad house used by Saddam Hussein’s son Qusay to hide top-secret files detail multimillion dollar payments to an outspoken British member of parliament, George Galloway. Evidence of Mr. Galloway’s dealings with the regime were first revealed earlier this week by David Blair, a reporter for the Daily Telegraph in London, who discovered documents in Iraq’s Foreign Ministry. The Labour Party MP, who lambasted his party’s prime minister, Tony Blair, in parliamentary debates on the war earlier this year, has denied the allegations. He is now the focus of a preliminary investigation by British law-enforcement officials and is under intense scrutiny in the British press, where the story has been splashed across the front pages. The most recent – and possibly most revealing – documents were obtained earlier this week by the Monitor. The papers include direct orders from the Hussein regime to issue Mr. Galloway six individual payments, starting in July 1992 and ending in January 2003…. The three most recent payment authorizations, beginning on April 4, 2000, and ending on January 14, 2003 are for $3 million each. All three authorizations include statements that show the Iraqi leadership’s strong political motivation in paying Galloway for his vociferous opposition to US and British plans to invade Iraq. The Jan. 14, 2003, document, written on Republican Guard stationary with its Iraqi eagle and “Trust in Allah,” calls for the “Manager of the security department, in the name of President Saddam Hussein, to order a gratuity to be issued to Mr. George Galloway of British nationality in the amount of three million dollars only.” The document states that the money is in return for “his courageous and daring stands against the enemies of Iraq, like Blair, the British Prime Minister, and for his opposition in the House of Commons and Lords against all outrageous lies against our patient people….”

[Are you saying this taints the entire anti-war movement?–ed. No, absolutely not. It is, however, yet another stain on the “leadership” of such social movements — click here and here for more blemishes] In the interest of fairness, here’s Galloway’s response to the initial Daily Telegraph story, and his response to the Christian Science Monitor story.