Those who wave their flags and believe this President loves the military personnel should read this. I frankly, don't find that historically any State advocates for its' veterans of war. Whether its Stalin sinking barges of returning veterans, Chiang Kaishek(sic) hunting down Mao, or Gen. Patton being hit by two trucks en route home, Government fears its military heroes. There is a aspect of the field of Revolution termed the thermidor, which is that time period in which the vacuum of power is being filled, when the very people who succeeded in the overthrow become the first to die in the purge.
Consider the American Revolution of 1776, when Washington had to plead with his troops to go to Valley Forge when they were ready to leave due to years of service without pay, or Shay's Rebellion. In more recent times, there is a little reported fact that over 200,000 American Gulf War veterans are dying of dieases the Government refuses to treat, delaying and stalling so as to eliminate the liability on the balance sheet of the war they represent. While it is necessary to convince them they are the heroes of the country - and they are - the government does not, in fact, treat them as such.
Don't shoot the messenger here, folks until you speak with the sick and dying Veterans, or those who have been awarded medals of distinction for their service in active combat, now being court-martialled for asking the military to abide its own rules and let him and his charges have a year off before being recalled. I support our troops, and this is why I post this; so we can know the reality and defend these men and women, and their rights, as they once defended us and our rights. These veterans are not a threat to me or a liability. To me, being American is more of a distinction than being a Republican or Democrat. Please post your comments on this or any other blog I have put up as your point of view may alter mine as well. Blog On.

ARTICLE EXCERPT BEGINS
Former Gulf War POWs tortured by Iraqis were awarded compensation by a Federal court from Iraq's frozen assets, yet the Bush administration blocked the POWs from collecting.
By Frederick Sweet

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.

A recent federal court ruling sided with the Bush White House in barring the former American POWs from collecting compensation money from Iraq. Now, Bush is trying to get the POWs’ entire case against Iraq thrown out -- a move the former POWs believe will wipe their torture out of the history books.

Ex-POWs detail torture by Iraqi secret police.

Last March, when the New York Daily News reported on the torture of the Gulf War POWs it stated that on Jan. 17, 1991, Navy navigator-bombardier Lt. Jeffrey Zaun set out in an A-6E Intruder on his first combat flight over Iraq. Zaun and his pilot were flying 500 mph, just 400 feet off the ground when their aircraft was hit by an enemy missile. The two fliers ejected from the plane and "woke up in the sand." Zaun, who is now 40 years old, recalled they were taken into custody by the Iraqi Army, but then turned over to the secret police. "Things got a little rough," Zaun said.

From day one as a POW, Zaun's captors kept him blindfolded and handcuffed so tightly the nerves in his hands were crushed. He was regularly beaten and he suffered from hypothermia. When his captors checked to see whether he was circumcised, he told them he wasn't Jewish but they didn't believe him. They simply beat him more or shocked him with an electric prod. During the 46 days of his tortured captivity, the 5-foot-3 airman lost 30 pounds.

"I'll remember the rest of my life, a guy with a nickel-plated pistol to my head, made me make a video," Zaun said. "It's the worst thing I'd ever do, and I thought they'd kill me after I made the film."

Zaun's captivity ended March 6, 1991. He was awarded the Prisoner of War Medal, and the Distinguished Flying Cross for heroism in flight, and other citations. He left the Navy in 1998 and graduated from the Wharton School of Business, and then, for a while, lived only two blocks from the World Trade Center while working at Lehman Brothers.

On Sept. 11, 2001, Zaun had an appointment for a job interview at Keefe, Bruyette & Woods in the twin towers. Sixty-seven of the company's employees died that day.

The torture of Marine pilot, Lt. Col. Craig Berryman began almost immediately after his capture on Jan. 28, 1991, when his Harrier aircraft was shot down near Kuwait City.

His captors punched, kicked and spat on him. He was later transported to Basra in Iraq, where his left leg was broken with blows from a club. A lit cigarette was pressed against his forehead, nose and ears, then crushed out in an open wound on his neck. Berryman finally was moved to Baghdad, where beatings continued with rubber hoses, clubs and pistol barrels. He was held captive 37 days.

U.S. Air Force pilot Capt. Dale Storr, the pilot of an A-10 Thunderbolt (Warthog) aircraft, (see above photo, Storr is on the left, it taken one day before his aircraft was shot down), was captured Feb. 2, 1991. He had been mistreated while held by the Iraqis during 33 days, according to a report in the November 17, 2003 Newsweek magazine and other sources.

At his lowest point, Storr told a Daily News reporter last March, "I was thinking I wouldn't get out alive, and hoping they'd just kill me.... Three days in, my nose was broken, they dislocated my shoulder, busted my eardrum, I was vomiting, and I'm being kicked. ... I was screaming in agony, so miserable, in pain."

Storr said the Iraqis wouldn't tell the Red Cross he was alive. "My family thought I was dead, and they had a memorial service at the squadron at the base in Saudi Arabia," Storr said. "My mother died of cancer six months after I got home; I'm sure my captivity hastened it."

Despite a "terrifying experience that scares the hell out of me," Storr stayed on in active duty in the Air Force for more than a year after his release. His love of country and flying led him to join the Air National Guard in 1994.

Bush stops compensation for tortured POWs

In July a federal court had ruled for the POWs, awarding them and their families more than $900 million in damages from Iraq for torturing the captured American servicemen. But when the POWs filed a second lawsuit to actually collect the money from Iraqi frozen assets held by the U.S., the Bush administration stepped in and stopped them, according to the November 2003 report in Newsweek.

A recent article in the Democratic Veteran quotes Taylor Griffin, a Treasury spokesman, who said that in March, President Bush ordered the seizure of about $1.7 billion of the frozen Iraqi money. Mr. Griffin said that under a provision of recent federal law, the U.S.A. Patriot Act, that money became U.S. government property and is unavailable to the former POWs.

Storr, now a Lt. Col. with the Washington Air National Guard, recently said that the Bush Administration's position troubled him. "It's sending a conflicting message to our troops. ...Congress and the judicial branch say, 'Let's protect our guys to the maximum extent possible,'" while the executive branch is "saying the opposite."

Storr's reserve unit, the 116th Air Refueling Squadron out of Fairchild Air Force Base in Spokane, is waiting to be activated. "It terrifies me thinking I could be a prisoner of war again," Storr said. "Hopefully, this whole thing will be taken care of and we'll not have to go over there, but if we do, we'll go over there and win."

It is cruelly ironic that Storr's military unit, the Air National Guard, is the same one in which Lt. George W. Bush had evaded military service in the Vietnam War by hiding out in Texas, Alabama and Florida. After his pilot training, Bush went AWOL for about a year from his assignments to the Alabama and Texas Air National Guard, as reported by the Boston Globe during the 2000 presidential election, and in a more recent, comprehensive report in Intervention Magazine.

The government's attorneys quoted L. Paul Bremer III, the U.S. administrator of Iraq: "Restricting these funds as a result of this litigation would affect adversely the ability of the United States to achieve security and stability in the region, would compromise the safety of U.S. forces and Iraqi civilians, and would be harmful to U.S. national security interests."

On July 30, federal judge Roberts ruled that even though Bush has the power to prevent the frozen Iraqi assets from being awarded to the ex-POWs, he refused to overturn his original finding that the men are entitled to compensation from Iraq. He said the Justice Department's motion to have the entire compensation judgment thrown out was "meritless."

Lawyers for the ex-POWs appealed judge Robert's decision upholding the president's power to deny access to the frozen Iraqi assets. But the administration position was affirmed. Now, the Justice Department is appealing Roberts' original decision that the POWs are entitled to compensation.

"It does surprise me a little bit that Bush is not helping," said Jeff Fox of Surfside Beach, S.C., who was held 15 days after his A-10 was shot down over southern Iraq on Feb. 19, 1991. "It sends a very bad message that a commander in chief would place veterans and prisoners of war second behind a foreign nation."

On Oct. 14, the U.S. Senate passed a nonbinding "sense of Congress" amendment urging the administration to drop all resistance to the claims of the ex-POWs. The amendment, sponsored by Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., was added to the bill providing $87 billion for U.S. military action and rebuilding in Iraq and Afghanistan.

"We must send a message to would-be tormentors of other governments that if they torture American POWs, they will be held accountable," Reid said.

The Bush administration's use of Patriot Act legislation against the tortured ex-POW veterans was recently discussed by their attorney. Stephen A. Fennell, a lawyer for the former prisoners, said [the currently] changing conditions in Iraq should be of no consequence. Under the Geneva Convention, he said, "these types of liabilities run with the states, not the governments."

But John Choon Yoo, until recently an international lawyer with the Justice Department, said the POWs' suit was dangerous. "I terrifically sympathize with their personal situation and what they went through," he said, "but the use of the courts and damages remedies interferes with the president's conduct of foreign policy."

This justification is almost the same one that the Bush administration used several months ago in siding with the insurance companies against Holocaust survivors. The insurance companies had tried to stop payments in court for the Insurance Industry/Holocaust Survivor suit brought against them by surviving Jewish victims of the Nazis.

The question is, who does Bush dislike more? American veterans or Jewish Holocaust survivors.


Frederick Sweet is Professor of Reproductive Biology in Obstetrics and Gynecology at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis.

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