Reply #3: That is not correct, quite the contrary

[Xipe Totec]

(on edit - this is a different Roberts)

The Bush administration stopped a group of former American POWs from collecting federal court-ordered compensation for their torture by Saddam Hussein's government during the Gulf War.

When the freed American POWs had returned home from the Persian Gulf War in March 1991, Vice President Dick Cheney, then secretary of defense, welcomed them at Andrews Air Force Base, MD with the words: "Every man and woman who cares for freedom owes you a very special measure of gratitude."

Last year, the former Gulf War POWs had sued Iraq for damages from mistreatment by Saddam's regime while they were in captivity. Then last July 7 — three months after the fall of Saddam's regime — U.S. District Judge Richard Roberts ordered Iraq to pay the 17 ex-POWs and their families $653 million in compensatory damages and $306 million in punitive damages.

Roberts ordered a temporary freeze on $653 million in Iraqi assets then held in the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, as a source of money for the settlement.

But the Bush administration stopped payment arguing that the money was instead needed for reconstructing Iraq. Most of Iraq's money was slated by Bush for shipment to Baghdad where U.S. soldiers are handing out the cash to Iraqi civil servants and military pensioners


http://www.interventionmag.com/cms/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=554