WP: POW Claims Bump Into Foreign Policy

[kskiska]

On Jan. 19, 1991, in the opening days of the war to liberate Kuwait from Iraqi occupation, Air Force Maj. Jeffrey Tice's F-16 was shot down over Baghdad. Over the next six weeks in Iraqi captivity, Tice was repeatedly beaten, subjected to electric shock and left in a dirty cell with meager rations.

To this day he suffers from nerve damage to his hands from being tightly handcuffed, and he still has occasional nightmares and flashbacks.

In April 2002, Tice, now a retired lieutenant colonel, and 16 other former POWs and their families sued the Saddam Hussein government in U.S. District Court in Washington. Iraq refused to contest the charges, and in 2003, Judge Richard W. Roberts determined that the plaintiffs were entitled to $959 million in damages, which would have to come from assets now controlled by the new U.S.-backed Iraqi government.

Yet today, the Bush administration is urging the Supreme Court to oppose the former prisoners of war. Resisting payment to war heroes forces the administration to walk an awkward political line, but it argues that the reconstruction of post-Hussein Iraq would be set back if the new government had to pay almost a billion dollars to the Americans.

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http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A23576-2005Apr3.html