[ql06] TORTS: U.S. Opposes Money for Troops Jailed in Iraq

From: Sheldon Erentzen <sheldon.erentzen@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: QL'06 newslist <ql06@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Mon, 10 Nov 2003 19:44:45 -0500

It took me a while to understand why exactly the Bush administration
would bother pissing off part of its core constituency by blocking this
payout. I think, and of course I may be wrong, that Bush has been
advised that if the U.S. courts honour this debt, the same type of suit
may be brought against the U.S. government by prisoners in Guantanamo or
anywhere else that the Americans are playing tit-for-tat. It's the same
reason that the U.S. withdrew from the Rome Statute
http://untreaty.un.org/ENGLISH/bible/englishinternetbible/partI/chapterXVIII/treaty10.asp#N6

It's interesting to look at how far TORT law can be carried.

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November 10, 2003

U.S. Opposes Money for Troops Jailed in Iraq

By PHILIP SHENON

ASHINGTON, Nov. 9 -- The Bush administration is seeking to block a group
of American troops who were tortured in Iraqi prisons during the Persian
Gulf war in 1991 from collecting any of the hundreds of millions of
dollars in frozen Iraqi assets they won last summer in a federal court
ruling against the government of Saddam Hussein.

In a court challenge that the administration is winning so far but is
not eager to publicize, administration lawyers have argued that Iraqi
assets frozen in bank accounts in the United States are needed for Iraqi
reconstruction and that the judgment won by the 17 former American
prisoners should be overturned.

If the administration succeeds, the former prisoners would be deprived
of the money they won and, they say, of the validation of a judge's
ruling that documented their accounts of torture by the Iraqis --
including beatings, burnings, starvation, mock executions and repeated
threats of castration and dismemberment.

"I don't want to say that I feel betrayed, because I still believe in my
country," said Lt. Col. Dale Storr, whose Air Force A-10 fighter jet was
shot down by Iraqi fire in February 1991.

"I've always tried to keep in the back of my mind that we were never
going to see any of the money," said Colonel Storr, who was held by the
Iraqis for 33 days -- a period in which he says his captors beat him
with clubs, broke his nose, urinated on him and threatened to cut off
his fingers if he did not disclose military secrets. "But it goes beyond
frustration when I see our government trying to pretend that this whole
case never happened."

Another former prisoner, David Eberly, a retired Air Force colonel whose
F-15 fighter was shot down over northwest Iraq and who said his
interrogators repeatedly pointed a gun at his head and pulled the
trigger on an empty chamber, said he was surprised by the
administration's eagerness to overturn the judgment.

"The administration wants $87 billion for Iraq," he said. "The money in
our case is just a drop of blood in the bucket."

Officials at the Justice and State Departments, which are overseeing the
administration's response to the case, say they are sensitive to the
claims of the former prisoners, who brought suit against Iraq under a
1996 law that allows foreign governments designated as terrorist
sponsors to be sued for injuries.

But they say the case cannot be allowed to hinder American foreign
policy and get in the way of the administration's multibillion-dollar
reconstruction efforts in Iraq -- an argument that federal appeals
courts seem likely to accept.

"No amount of money can truly compensate these brave men and women for
the suffering that they went through at the hands of a truly brutal
regime," said Scott McClellan, the White House spokesman. "It was
determined earlier this year by Congress and the administration that
those assets were no longer assets of Iraq, but they were resources
required for the urgent national security needs of rebuilding Iraq."

In a related case, a federal judge in New York ruled in September that
the families of people killed in the Sept. 11 attacks could not claim
any part of about $1.7 billion in frozen Iraqi assets in the United States.

The judge noted that President Bush had signed an executive order in
March, on the eve of the American invasion of Iraq, that confiscated
Iraqi assets and converted them into assets of the United States
government. In May, after Mr. Hussein was ousted, Mr. Bush issued a
declaration that effectively removed Iraq from a list of countries
liable for some court judgments involving past rights abuses and links
to terrorism.

In a sworn court filing in the case for the former prisoners, L. Paul
Bremer III, the American administrator in Iraq, said the money won by
the former prisoners had already been "completely obligated or expended"
in reconstruction efforts.

"These funds are critical to maintaining peace and stability in Iraq,"
he said. "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 case dates from April of last year, when the 17 former prisoners and
their families filed suit in the Federal District Court here against Mr.
Hussein and his government, seeking damages for the physical and
emotional injuries suffered as a result of torture during the prisoners'
captivity. The prisoners represented all branches of the military.

The Iraqi government made no effort to respond to the lawsuit. In July,
three months after the fall of Mr. Hussein, Judge Richard W. Roberts
ordered the former Iraqi government to pay damages totaling nearly $1
billion -- $653 million in compensatory damages, $306 million in
punitive damages.

"No one would subject himself for any price to the terror, torment and
pain experienced by these American P.O.W.'s," the judge wrote. But he
said that "only a very sizable award would be likely to deter the
torture of American P.O.W.'s by agencies or instrumentalities of Iraq or
other terrorist states in the future."

The lawyers who brought the case on behalf of the former prisoners said
such a huge penalty against Iraq would discourage other governments from
torturing American troops.

"This was a major human rights decision," said John Norton Moore, one of
the lawyers and a professor of national security law at the University
of Virginia. "It never occurred to me in my wildest dreams that I would
then see our government coming in on the side of Saddam Hussein and his
regime to absolve them of responsibility for the brutal torture of
Americans."

The administration moved within days of Judge Roberts's decision to
block the former prisoners from collecting any money. On July 30, the
judge reluctantly sided with the government, saying Mr. Bush's actions
after the overthrow of Mr. Hussein had barred the transfer of the frozen
assets to the former prisoners.

He said he had no other choice even though the administration's position
"that the P.O.W.'s are unable to recover any portion of their judgment
as requested, despite their sacrifice in the service of their country,
seems extreme." The former prisoners are appealing the case through the
United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.

Stephen A. Fennell, a Washington lawyer who is also representing the
former prisoners, said the Bush administration had rejected a proposal
that would have allowed the United States to delay the payments to his
clients for months or years -- until after the reconstruction of Iraq
was well under way. "My guys are obviously real patriots, and they
authorized us to tell the government that we were willing to wait," he
said. "But that was turned down."

Cynthia Acree, whose husband, Clifford, is a Marine colonel who was held
by the Iraqis for 47 days, said that "the money is not the issue and it
never has been."

She said Judge Roberts's ruling that detailed her husband's torture --
including beatings that resulted in a skull fracture and broken nose, as
well as mock executions and threats of castration -- had been "a
tremendous gift" to her husband.

"I remember it so well, the look on my husband's face when he heard the
decision, because finally there was a public record," she said. "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."

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[ql06] TORTS: U.S. Opposes Money for Troops Jailed in Iraq

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