From the
L.A. TImes:
The latest chapter in the legal history of torture is being written by American pilots who were beaten and abused by Iraqis during the 1991 Persian Gulf War. And it has taken a strange twist.
The Bush administration is fighting the former prisoners of war in court, trying to prevent them from collecting nearly $1 billion from Iraq that a federal judge awarded them as compensation for their torture at the hands of Saddam Hussein's regime.
The rationale: Today's Iraqis are good guys, and they need the money.
Read on ...
"No amount of money can truly compensate these brave men and women for the suffering that they went through at the hands of this very brutal regime and at the hands of Saddam Hussein," White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan told reporters when asked about the case in November 2003.
Note how Mr. McClellan uses the "suffering" of "these brave men and women" to condemn Sadam.
But wait, despite the apparent sympathy expressed for "these brave men and women," it turns out that all the Bush Administration has for "these brave men and women" is ... sympathy. Sorry, fellas, them poor Iraqis need that money more than you do ... and this while BuschCo, et. al., can't account for $9 billion spent that they've pissed away over there.
Government lawyers have insisted, literally, on "no amount of money" going to the Gulf War POWs. "These resources are required for the urgent national security needs of rebuilding Iraq," McClellan said.
But wait, it gets better ...
The case also tests a key provision of the Geneva Convention, the international law that governs the treatment of prisoners of war. The United States and other signers pledged never to "absolve" a state of "any liability" for the torture of POWs.
But this should hardly be surprising, coming from an administration that's already wiped its lying ass with the Geneva Convention. Rule of law? Honoring one's committments? What's that?!
And, as if the preceding isn't bad enough, it's apparent that the Bush administration's loyalties lie with the Iraqis, and not with those "brave men and women" ...
Already frustrated by the turn of events, the former POWs were startled when Rumsfeld said he favored awarding compensation to the Iraqi prisoners who were abused by the U.S. military at Abu Ghraib.
"I am seeking a way to provide appropriate compensation to those detainees who suffered grievous and brutal abuse and cruelty at the hands of a few members of the U.S. military. It is the right thing to do," Rumsfeld told a Senate committee last year.
The utter treachery of these people is beyond all imagining; do they really think this is the best way to not only reward those who have served, but to go about inducing more "brave men and women" to enlist ... and this at a time when they're literally begging for troops?
A pox upon their evil house ... Is this what Jesus would do, indeed?