US POWs Fighting... US Government?

From the excellent America for Sale:

The LA Times (reg req) is reporting on the legal case against Iraq brought by 17 U.S. pilots and soldiers who were captured and tortured in Iraq, some in Abu Ghraib, during the first Gulf War.

On July 21, 2003, two weeks after the Gulf War POWs won their court case in U.S. District Court, the Bush administration intervened to argue that their claims should be dismissed.

"No amount of money can truly compensate these brave men and women for the suffering that they went through at the hands of this very brutal regime and at the hands of Saddam Hussein," White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan told reporters when asked about the case in November 2003.

Government lawyers have insisted, literally, on "no amount of money" going to the Gulf War POWs.

Arguing that frozen Iraqi assets in the United States should be spent on Iraqi reconstruction, not compensating American servicepeople who were victims of torture, the Administration is urging the US Supreme Court to reject the case.

The Geneva Conventions, all but officially discarded by the United States, get a walk through in this issue as well.

The case also tests a key provision of the Geneva Convention, the international law that governs the treatment of prisoners of war. The United States and other signers pledged never to "absolve" a state of "any liability" for the torture of POWs.

Former military lawyers and a bipartisan group of lawmakers have been among those who have urged the Supreme Court to take up the case and to strengthen the law against torturers and tyrannical regimes.

"Our government is on the wrong side of this issue," said Jeffrey F. Addicott, a former Army lawyer and director of the Center for Terrorism Law at St. Mary's University in San Antonio. "A lot of Americans would scratch their heads and ask why is our government taking the side of Iraq against our POWs."

I'd be one of those.

In an era where everything the Administration wants to fund is handled in emergency supplementals and we're throwing money at private contractors in Iraq hand over fist, let the Iraqis bear this burden. The award, for slightly under a billion dollars, is likely less than the amount we've lost to waste and fraud in our current Iraqi adventure. Monitor our disbursements more closely in 2005 and we can get the same amount of money back to Iraqis in no time.

Our soldiers deserve better than this.