From the AP:

British lawmaker George Galloway vehemently rejected a Senate subcommittee’s claim that Saddam Hussein awarded him lucrative allocations under the U.N. oil-for-food program and accused its chairman of maligning his good name.

The subcommittee, chaired by Minnesota Republican Norm Coleman, claimed that Galloway allegedly funneled allocations through a fund he established in 1998 to help a 4-year-old Iraqi girl suffering from leukemia and received allocations worth 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,” Galloway said. “I was an opponent of Saddam Hussein when British and American governments and businessmen were selling him guns and gas.”

[…] Coleman said Galloway and others who received oil allocations, including prominent Russian politician Vladimir Zhirinovsky, then paid kickbacks to Saddam as part of the deal. He claimed that Saddam received more than $300,000 in surcharges on allocations involving Galloway.

“Senior Hussein regime officials informed the subcommittee that the allocation holders — in this case, Galloway — were ultimately responsible for the surcharge payment and therefore would have known of the illegal, under-the-table payment,” he said.

Galloway rejected that and accused Coleman of never having contacted him about the charges. He also defended his opposition to the U.N. sanctions and the U.S.-led Iraq war.

“I gave my heart and soul to stop you from committing the disaster that you did commit in invading Iraq,” Galloway said. “And I told the world that the case for war was a pack of lies.”

Reached for comment, the newly democratic government of Iraq was quick to dismiss Galloway’s characterization of the war as a “disaster,” noting that “the freedom of 25 million Iraqis—and the new coalition government, which will put to lie the assertion that rival ethnic factions in the Arab world cannot work together—is hardly disastrous, and is in fact the most important advance in this region since baba ganoush and cotton weaves.  So, y’know.  Perhaps Mr. Galloway would like to kiss our free Arab asses…?”

Perhaps.