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U.S. Opposes Money for Troops Jailed in Iraq
By PHILIP SHENON
WASHINGTON, Nov. 9 — The Bush administration is seeking to block a group of American troops who were tortured in Iraqi prisons during the Persian Gulf war in 1991 from collecting any of the hundreds of millions of dollars in frozen Iraqi assets they won last summer in a federal court ruling against the government of Saddam Hussein.

In a court challenge that the administration is winning so far but is not eager to publicize, administration lawyers have argued that Iraqi assets frozen in bank accounts in the United States are needed for Iraqi reconstruction and that the judgment won by the 17 former American prisoners should be overturned....

..."No one would subject himself for any price to the terror, torment and pain experienced by these American P.O.W.'s," the judge wrote. But he said that "only a very sizable award would be likely to deter the torture of American P.O.W.'s by agencies or instrumentalities of Iraq or other terrorist states in the future."

The lawyers who brought the case on behalf of the former prisoners said such a huge penalty against Iraq would discourage other governments from torturing American troops.

"This was a major human rights decision," said John Norton Moore, one of the lawyers and a professor of national security law at the University of Virginia. "It never occurred to me in my wildest dreams that I would then see our government coming in on the side of Saddam Hussein and his regime to absolve them of responsibility for the brutal torture of Americans."...