Wretchard's Prescience.

Remember the Galloway hearings in the senate some months ago?

Remember how everyone thought Galloway came out the winner because of his flowery insults and bombast? Remember how Coleman and Levin were utterly without defense under Galloway's withering attacks?

Well, the point of the hearings was not to trade insult but to establish fact and elicit testimony. Wretchard (from the Belmont Club) noted this immediately after the affair

In the exchange above it is abundantly clear that both Coleman and Levin simply wanted to enter Galloway's denial of having discussed Oil for Food business with Tariq Aziz in the record. Levin immediately ends his questioning after eliciting Galloway's "Never". Coleman is content to merely establish that Aziz and Galloway were "friends" who had met "many times" before saying "I have no further questions of the witness".

Source: The Belmont Club - Playing to the Galloway

Wretchard recalls the testimony and adds some new speculation

(Speculation alert) ... Playing to his gallery, Galloway boomed, "I can assure you, Mr. Zureikat never gave me a penny from an oil deal, from a cake deal, from a bread deal, or from any deal." Nice touch about the cake and the bread. Perhaps he couldn't imagine, at the time, why these yokels were asking him simple questions that were beneath his level of rhetorical ability. [emphasis added]

Source: The Belmont Club - Playing to the Galloway

Yes yes yes. It was all just fun and games at the hearing wasn't it? The senate was full of stuffy old pompous men, right who could not compete with an old master?

Well, Coleman & Levin played it cool and it seems Galloway charged right into the middle of a trap. This story is far from over (like the Packer-Viking game wasn't over at halftime) this should be interesting.