Maybe Galloway was framed?

The Christian Science Monitor today published what is, in effect, a retraction of its April 25th story alleging that British Labor Party MP George Galloway was on Saddam's payroll:

On April 25, 2003, this newspaper ran a story about documents obtained in Iraq that alleged Saddam Hussein's regime had paid a British member of Parliament, George Galloway, $10 million over 11 years to promote its interests in the West.

An extensive Monitor investigation has subsequently determined that the six papers detailed in the April 25 piece are, in fact, almost certainly forgeries.

The article goes on to quote Monitor editor Paul Van Slambrouck saying that the Monitor is "convinced the documents are bogus" and apologizing to Galloway and their readers.

The most interesting part of the Monitor piece was their detailed description of the steps they took to verify the bona fides of the documents in question.   Apparently they consulted with a number of experts on Arabic language, Iraqi government documents, and forensic document analysis before concluding that the documents are probably phony.   While they didn't come right out and say it, it appears that former Iraqi General Salah Abdel Rasool was out to make a quick buck and ginned up the documents.   He was pretty smart about it, too, since he didn't sell them to reporters, but rather gave them for free with an agreement that his "neighbor" would be paid $800 to translate the documents.   The forgeries, if they are forgeries, were also pretty thorough.   Only ink dating (which is apparently more of an art than a science) suggested that the documents are forgeries.

However, Galloway is not out of the woods as yet.   The UK Telegraph, which broke the story alleging Galloway's treachery on April 22nd, obtained its documents from a different source.   While Galloway has continuously maintained his innocence and threatened legal action against the Telegraph and other papers reporting these allegations, he did admit just this week that he was in Baghdad on the day mentioned in the Telegraph's alleged Iraqi document.

As of this morning, The Telegraph appears to be standing by its story.