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June 05, 2004
A Damn Good Decision: POW lawsuit thrown out [edit, additional comment]
I know this will be yet another item to make me unpopular in many quarters, but the following is an excellent development.
U.S. Gulf War POWs Denied Settlement
By Hope Yen
Associated Press
Saturday, June 5, 2004; Page A15
"An appeals court panel threw out a $959 million judgment yesterday for U.S. prisoners of war who say they were tortured by the Iraqi military during the 1991 Persian Gulf War, ruling that Congress never authorized such lawsuits against foreign governments.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit overturned a lower court's ruling that said 17 former POWs and 37 family members were entitled to the damages under a federal statute allowing suits involving countries that financed or aided terrorists.
The three-judge panel said the statute allows lawsuits for pain and suffering only if they are filed against agents and officers of those foreign states responsible for the torture who are not acting on behalf of their government. So, even though the lawsuit also names Saddam Hussein, he is immune because the POWs sued him for his alleged activities as Iraq's president.
"We are mindful of the gravity of the allegations in this case. That appellees endured this suffering while acting in service to their country is all the more sobering," Judge Harry Edwards said. "Nevertheless, we cannot ignore . . . its impact on the United States' conduct of foreign policy where the law is indisputably clear that appellees were not legally entitled.""
I note the underlying judgement was a default judgement.
Rather simply, while suing another government for abuses etc. sounds all nice and touchy feely, it is, like the Belgian courts, something that opens a pandora's box of problems... an inappropriate mechanism. Of course, one can only imagine how a similar Iraqi lawsuit might go in re Abu Ghrieb.
EDIT Added:
Further to this point, I note the following comment from here:
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/05/international/worldspecial/05court.html
"David Eberly, an Air Force colonel, now retired, whose F-15 fighter was shot down over northwest Iraq and who says interrogators repeatedly pointed a gun at his head and pulled the trigger on an empty chamber, described himself as confused by the administration's priorities. Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld has expressed support for compensating Iraqi detainees who suffered abuse by American soldiers at Abu Ghraib prison, Colonel Eberly noted, even as the government fought the former prisoners' suit.
"I can't believe," Colonel Eberly said, "that the government is willing to spend U.S. tax dollars to compensate Iraqis when they are not willing to allow us to pursue this judgment against Iraqi dollars. And they have fought it with U.S. dollars."
Reasons of state, simple fellow, reasons of state. The compensation for the Iraqi detainees is not justice, it is bribery, it is face saving. And of coruse trivial in comparision with the ridiculously large judgement won against the Iraqi state. I note further that use of private lawsuits in matters of foreign policy is recipe for chaos and self-defeating disasterous posturing. The spectacle of (relatively) wealthy Americans winning nearly a billion dollars from an impoverished country for abuses/torture, while US soldiers commit the same is bad politics and harms US interests. As soldiers, their personal interests fell behind interests of state.
Posted by The Lounsbury at June 5, 2004 04:25 PM
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Jan-Jul 2004
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