Friday, Nov. 21, 2003 | 9:08 a.m.
Suzanne Struglinski
WASHINGTON -- The battle over $959 million for former prisoners of war -- including Las Vegas resident Jeffrey Tice -- continues, with Nevada Democrat Sen. Harry Reid scheduled to take to the airwaves Sunday.
Reid said he wants President Bush to know that holding all of Iraq's financial assets is hurting the veterans' chances of receiving their payment. He will discuss the issue on CBS' "60 Minutes" on Sunday, according to the network.
On Monday, the Senate approved another "sense of the Congress" amendment that would allow Tice and 16 other former POWs from the first Gulf War to collect $959 million won in a lawsuit filed against Iraq for pain caused by torture during their imprisonment.
The POWs were supposed to collect the money from frozen Iraqi assets, but the U.S. government has transferred the money, saying it needs to be used to rebuild Iraq.
The Senate approved the amendment during debate on the Veterans Affairs spending bill. Though not binding, it expresses Congress' intent to force the administration to recognize the case and negotiate the compensation out of Saddam Hussein's assets now held by the United States.
"They won their case in court on its merits because they had the truth and the law on their side," Reid said on the floor Monday. "But now they are in danger of losing the judgment they legally obtained because they do not have the United States government on their side."
The Senate passed the Veterans Affairs spending bill Tuesday, although the House version passed earlier still needs to make it through conference negotiations, where it had run into problems before, Reid spokeswoman Tessa Hafen said.
The Senate first approved the amendment Oct. 15 during debate on President Bush's $87 billion spending bill to fund the war and reconstruction efforts in Iraq, but the State Department sent a letter to House and Senate negotiators on the Iraq bill urging them to strip the relevant language. Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage wrote that the Reid amendment was "inconsistent with our national objective regarding Iraq."
He explained that courts no longer have jurisdiction to hear cases such as the one filed by Tice and the others and that Iraqi assets would be used to help the Iraqi people and for rebuilding the country. The final bill did not include Reid's amendment.
"It is beyond my comprehension why these federal bureaucrats are now siding with Saddam Hussein and against these former prisoners of war who suffered at his hands," Reid said.
The White House has not addressed the matter specifically.
"When repeatedly asked about why the administration is standing in the way of these veterans being paid their court-awarded damages, the White House spokesman never answered the question but reiterated, three times, that 'there is no amount of money that can truly compensate these brave men and women for the suffering they went through at the hands of Saddam Hussein,' " said Florida Democrat Sen. Bob Graham.
"If the Bush White House has its way, there will, in fact, be no amount of money to compensate these brave men and women despite having proven their case in a court of law."
The White House could not be reached for comment.
According to CBS, Jeff Fox, one of the former POWs who brought the suit said: "I personally don't believe that the president of the United States would, given the choice between money back to Iraq or to help us, would choose Iraq ... I would think that his staff probably presented to him a case that probably didn't contain us."
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