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Politics : Moderate Forum -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: epicure who wrote (4431)	11/10/2003 9:34:42 AM
From: epicure	Respond to of 20773

third page: 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."