Looks like the Bush Administration not only looks for ways for the U.S. to get around the Geneva Convention but they also help Iraq get around it when they torture Americans.

Former POWs tortured in Iraq battle U.S. to collect awards


By Otto Kreisher
COPLEY NEWS SERVICE
April 8, 2005

WASHINGTON – Marine Corps pilot Cliff Acree was tortured while being held as a prisoner of war in Iraq in 1991 during the first Persian Gulf War.

Now, the retired colonel and 16 other former prisoners find themselves in what one called the unimaginable position of fighting their own government in an effort to obtain the compensation from Iraq that a federal court awarded them for their brutal treatment.

Acree, an Oceanside resident, joined retired Air Force Lt. Col. Jeffrey Tice, another former POW, and their lawyers yesterday in asking the Bush administration to stop opposing their effort to receive a judgment for nearly $1 billion against the regime of Saddam Hussein that the former POWs and 37 family members won in July 2003.

The former prisoners and their families had filed their claim for compensation using the provisions of a 1996 federal anti-terrorism law. Although they had kept the government fully informed of their legal action, one of their attorneys said, the administration offered no opposition until they won their case.

The administration then appealed, and the U.S. Court of Appeals in Washington overturned the judgment. The POWs are asking the Supreme Court to reverse the appeals court ruling.

The administration has argued that the money the former prisoners would receive is needed to help rebuild Iraq and bolster the new government.

Acree, as commander of a Marine observation squadron, was shot down over Iraq and captured the second day of Operation Desert Storm when his aircraft was hit by a surface-to-air missile.

"For the next 48 days of my captivity, I experienced torture, starvation, mock executions and confinement in a freezing, filthy environment," Acree said. He also suffered "violent, prolonged and frequent beatings, to the point of being beaten into unconsciousness," he said.

Acree said he and his fellow POWs filed the lawsuit under provisions of U.S. law and the international Geneva Conventions on treatment of prisoners of war "that allowed us to hold accountable a nation that had tortured us."

Tice, a former Air Force fighter pilot, recalled that when he was a prisoner in Baghdad, "shivering, starving and just trying to survive for the next 15 minutes ... I never, ever imagined, in my wildest dreams, that I would be petitioning the Supreme Court to help me fight my own country for the rule of law."

John Norton Moore, one of the POW's attorneys, said the money to pay the judgment could come from $1.7 billion in assets the United States seized from the former Hussein regime after Iraq's 1990 invasion of Kuwait.

http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/world/i...99-1n8pows.html

Everytime I read this story it ticks me off.

Reading this story really makes me wonder whose side Bush is on. Young Americans and non-Americans (hoping to gain citizenship after joining the armed forces) are welcomed and dragged in to join these wars, and when they pay a terrible price for it and then get compensation agreed on, in steps the Administration to trample on all their hopes.

Court declines to hear case of POWs alleging torture
By Hope Yen, Associated Press, 4/25/2005 10:19

WASHINGTON (AP) The Supreme Court on Monday declined to consider whether U.S. prisoners of war who say they were tortured during the 1991 Gulf War should collect a $959 million judgment from Iraq.

The justices let stand a lower court ruling that threw out the lawsuit by the 17 former POWs and 37 family members. That ruling, by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit last year, said Congress never authorized such lawsuits against foreign governments.

The dispute pitted the Bush administration, which argued the money was needed to rebuild Iraq, against former service members.

The decision by the appellate court ''runs roughshod over decades of United States dedication to the laws of war, and sends a message to United States military personnel that while they protect their country, their country will not protect them,'' wrote the National League of POW/MIA Families in a friend-of-the-court filing.

The administration countered that the courts should defer to the executive branch on foreign policy decisions. It suggested in filings that the president may seek compensation for the POWs through diplomatic means once the new Iraqi regime is ''firmly established.''

At issue was a 1996 federal law that allows Americans to collect damages for hostage-taking, torture or murder committed by officials of foreign states who are designated as ''state sponsors of terrorism'' by the State Department. At the time, Iraq was listed as one such state.

The 17 POWs filed their lawsuit in 2002, alleging that they endured severe beatings, starvation, electric shock, threats of amputation and dismemberment and continual death threats.

Nearly 125 pages of the complaint detail the servicemen's stories, including those of Marine Maj. Michael Craig Berryman, who said his legs were beaten with a metal pipe and a wooden ax handle; Marine Col. Clifford Acree, who said he was so near starvation he could ''feel his body consuming itself;'' and Navy Cmdr. Lawrence Slade, whose body was described as so blue from bruises that it was ''as if he had been dipped in indigo dye.''

The Iraqi government never appeared in U.S. court to argue its case, leading to the default judgment in 2003 that the POWs planned to obtain from $1.7 billion in assets frozen by the U.S. government.

By then, however, the U.S. had invaded Iraq and toppled Saddam Hussein from power. Soon after, the Justice Department intervened in the lawsuit, saying the money was needed to rebuild Iraq.

Government lawyers also argued that the POWs weren't entitled to the judgment because President Bush made an official determination in May 2003 that a statute allowing payment from frozen assets wasn't applicable to Iraq because it no longer supported terrorism after Saddam was overthrown.

The D.C. appeals court agreed, saying the federal statute only allows lawsuits for pain and suffering if they are filed against agents and officers of those foreign states responsible for the torture who are not acting on behalf of their government.

The case is Acree v. Iraq, 04-820.


On the Net:

Supreme Court: http://www.supremecourtus.gov/

http://www.boston.com/dailynews/115/wash/C..._case_ofP.shtml