At last, it’s over. For years, I have had a protracted row with people who believe George Galloway is truly, madly, deeply opposed to Saddam Hussein and to dictatorships across the world. No, no, he wasn’t saluting Saddam, they’d say – he was saluting the Iraqi people he had just being massacring in their tens of thousands. No, no, when he wrote in his autobiography that "likely to have been the leader in history who came closest to creating a truly Iraqi national identity, and he developed Iraq and the living, health, social and education standards of his own people”, he was only offering The Other Side of the argument. No, no, when he went disco-dancing with the foreign minister of a fascist state, he was simply opposing sanctions. No, no, when he refuses to use the word “genocide” to describe Saddam’s racist murder of the Kurds, he isn’t acting as an apologist.

But now when know for sure. On Celebrity Big Brother, the most revealing moment has not been the MP’s purring puss-impression, nor his car-crash Elvis impersonation. It is when he was asked by Rula Lenska, "Was he [Saddam] hated by the ordinary [Iraqi] people?" He replied: "Not at all; not at all...as is obvious now; now they admit that. He was hated by political opponents as he suppressed all opposition political forces, but he wasn't hated by the ordinary Iraqi - no, not at all".

To anybody but the wilfully blind, it is now undeniable Galloway is minimising Saddam's crimes. He could not keep up the act while being filmed for three weeks. He implies, on camera so he cannot deny it, that Saddam was only hated by his political opponents (who, he hints, could have kept their heads down and survived). Were the women and children of Hallabja opposing him? Was every single Marsh Arab, as their swamps were poisoned and their millenia-old civilisation destroyed? How should the Kurds have kept their heads down - by committing suicide? Or was Saddam actually - as every human rights organisation says - an indiscriminate racist murderer, despised by the vast majority of Iraqis? Look at the opinon polls - the same ones Galloway quotes when they say they want the American troops out: they find that 97 percent – 97 percent – of Iraqis hate Saddam.

Perhaps Galloway will try to say that when he said "not at all", he meant, "yes, they did." After all, he ludicrously claims he was not saluting Saddam Hussein when he stood in front of him and said, "Sir, I salute your courage, your strength and your indefatigability," but rather the Iraqi people he had just been massacring in their tens of thousands. His capacity for bare-faced wriggling is extraordinary.

But I hope all sane people - from whom I exclude his groupies in the Respect 'Coalition' - will now acknowledge that George Galloway is an apologist for Ba'athism, and apologise for disputing what was clearly, blatantly staring them in the face all along. Those people who said it was "corporate propaganda" to point out these truths about Galloway (step forward, Medialens) should apologise. Those people who said Galloway was sincerely against Saddam Hussein (step forward, assorted bloggers) should apologise. Those decent people who want to be part of hard-left organisations but were misled into joining Galloway's front-organisation should resign and join an anti-Baathist hardline organisation like the Alliance for Workers' Liberty.

There is still a long, legitimate argument to be had about the war – but the argument about George Galloway and his apologism for a fascist dictator is finally finished.