The Bush administration has blocked compensation for US soldiers captured and tortured during the first Gulf war, arguing that the money was now needed for Iraq’s reconstruction, veterans’ lawyers said yesterday.
Seventeen former prisoners of war were awarded nearly $1billion in compensatory and punitive damages by a US federal court in July.
The awards were supposed to have been paid out of $1,7-billion in seized Iraqi assets, but the administration stepped in to prevent them receiving the money on the grounds that it had been confiscated from the Iraqi government in March and was therefore the property of the US government.
The civilian head of the US-run occupation in Iraq, Paul Bremer, testified in the case with a sworn statement: ”These funds are critical to maintaining peace and stability in Iraq. Restricting these funds as a result of this litigation would affect adversely the ability of the United States to achieve security and stability in the region.”
The administration is also trying to reverse a court order underpinning the awards, with an appeal next month.
Lawyers for the 17 veterans said they were outraged by the government’s actions, pointing to the extent of the suffering of PoWs at the hands of their Iraqi captors, including beatings, burning, mock executions, starvation, threats of castration and mutilation.
One of the lawyers involved in the case, Tony Onorato, said that by trying to rescind the judgement behind the awards, the government was, in effect, ignoring the experiences of the PoWs.
Onorato also argued that the awards would deter foreign governments from mistreating American soldiers in a future conflict. By blocking the award, he said, that deterrent was undermined.
He added that the former soldiers and their lawyers had tried to negotiate with senior members of the administration over their plight, but had been rebuffed. They had consequently taken their case to the US Congress, where they were winning substantial support.
”No amount of money can truly compensate these brave men and women for the suffering that they went through at the hands of brutal regime,” the White House spokesman, Scott McClellan, said in a press briefing.
But he added that the assets no longer belonged to Iraq, and were needed for the reconstruction effort.
Lieutenant Colonel Dale Storr, an air force pilot who was severely beaten during his 33 days in captivity, told the New York Times: ”It goes beyond frustration when I see our government trying to pretend that this whole case never happened.”
The veterans and their families have said that the most painful aspect of the government’s intervention was that it symbolised a denial of the soldiers’ suffering.
”I remember it so well, the look on my husband’s face when he heard the decision, because finally there was a public record,” said Cynthia Acree, whose husband, Clifford, a Marine colonel, had his skull fractured and nose broken while in Iraqi detention.
”But now our government wants to act like none of this happened, to throw out the entire case. My husband is an active-duty Marine colonel, and President Bush is his commander-in-chief. But I’m not. And I can say that I feel betrayed.” – Guardian Unlimited Â