BRIT FRIES SENATORS IN OIL 
By NILES LATHEM 
WASHINGTON — British politician George Galloway went eyeball to eyeball with Senate investigators yesterday, calling allegations he took oil bribes from Saddam Hussein a pack of lies and labeling the U.N. oil-for-food scandal probe the mother of all smokescreens. 
In an appearance before the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations that was stunning in its audacity, the anti-war member of Parliament launched a furious counter-assault on President Bush and Republican probers. Galloway claimed the oil-for-food scandal was cooked up to slander anti-war critics. 
You have nothing on me, senator, except my name on lists, many of which have been drawn up after the installation of your puppet government in Baghdad, Galloway said to the panel's chairman, Sen. Norm Coleman (R-Minn.). 
I am not now, nor have I ever been an oil trader, and neither has anyone on my behalf. 
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. 
Coleman and other senators were caught flat-footed by the ferocity of Galloway's counter-offensive. They cut short the questioning of him and abruptly stopped the hearing. 
Coleman said later that despite the theatrics, Galloway gave evasive answers to some questions and was unable to refute the documentary evidence collected by his investigators. He said he would send the committee's report to British authorities. 
Galloway demanded to appear before the Coleman committee after it released a report last week detailing evidence it obtained from Iraqi government documents and interviews with Saddam's top aides, including former Iraqi Vice President Taha Yashin Ramadan, now in U.S. custody. 
The committee said the new evidence indicates that Galloway received allocations for 20 million barrels of discount Iraqi oil. 
The shady deals were allegedly arranged through a mysterious Jordanian businessman and in one case laundered through a charity Galloway created for a 4-year old Iraqi girl with leukemia. 
But Galloway counterpunched — calling facts in the report schoolboy howlers and challenging the evidence and the credibility of former regime witnesses, especially Ramadan. 
I know he is your prisoner. I believe he is in the Abu Ghraib prison. I believe he is facing war crimes charges punishable by death, Galloway said. 
In these circumstances, knowing what the world knows about how you treat prisoners in Abu Ghraib prison, in Bagram Air Base, in Guantanamo Bay . . . I'm not sure how much credibility anyone would put on anything you manage to get from a prisoner in those circumstances, Galloway added. 
Galloway, who was elected to a heavily Muslim district earlier this month despite being kicked out of the Labor Party, also denied he was a Saddam apologist and said he only met the Butcher of Baghdad twice. 
As a matter of fact, I met Saddam Hussein exactly the same number of times as Donald Rumsfeld met with him, Galloway said, referring to meetings the defense secretary had during the Reagan administration.