Truth to Power

Rotten bastards dept.

U.S. stands in way of POWs’ compensation from Iraq

By DAVID G. SAVAGE, Los Angeles Times

WASHINGTON – The latest chapter in the legal history of torture is being written by U.S. pilots who were beaten and abused by Iraqis during the 1991 Persian Gulf War. And it has taken a strange twist.

The Bush administration is fighting the former prisoners of war in court, trying to prevent them from collecting nearly $1 billion from Iraq that a federal judge awarded them as compensation for their torture at the hands of Saddam Hussein’s regime.

The rationale: Today’s Iraqis are good guys, and they need the money.

The case abounds with ironies. It pits the U.S. government squarely against its own war heroes and the Geneva Conventions. </i>

We really are being lead by a bunch of callous pricks, in case you hadn’t picked up on it yet.


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