I didn't think the Bush administration could sink so low that they suprise me anymore. But they did. Read this article from the Los Angeles Times:
Los Angeles Times
February 15, 2005
Pg. 1
White House Turns Tables On Former American POWs
Gulf War pilots tortured by Iraqis fight the Bush administration in trying to
collect compensation.
By David G. Savage, Times Staff Writer
WASHINGTON - 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.
The case abounds with ironies. It pits the U.S. government squarely against its
own war heroes and the Geneva Convention.
Many of the pilots were tortured in the same Iraqi prison, Abu Ghraib, where
American soldiers abused Iraqis 15 months ago. Those Iraqi victims, Defense
Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld has said, deserve compensation from the United
States.
But the American victims of Iraqi torturers are not entitled to similar payments
from Iraq, the U.S. government says.
"It seems so strange to have our own country fighting us on this," said retired
Air Force Col. David W. Eberly, the senior officer among the former POWs.
The case, now being appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, tests whether "state
sponsors of terrorism" can be sued in the U.S. courts for torture, murder or
hostage-taking.
To read the rest, go to http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-pow15feb15,0,5478867.story?coll=la-home-nation
