Reid says Gulf War POWs should be compensated

Suzanne Struglinski

Tuesday, June 15, 2004 | 9:36 a.m.

WASHINGTON -- If the Defense Department plans to compensate Iraqis injured in U.S. military prisons, it also needs to pay 17 U.S. soldiers held as prisoners of war during the first Gulf War, Sen. Harry Reid said Monday.

The Senate passed without objection an amendment offered by Reid to the defense authorization bill that would require the Defense Department to include 17 soldiers that were held as POWs by Saddam Hussein during the first Gulf War in any plan to creates to provide compensation to Iraqis injured in Abu Ghraib.

"The Defense Department cannot continue to turn its back on the brave men we sent into battle," said Reid, a Nevada Democrat.

Las Vegas resident Jeff Tice and 16 other soldiers were captured and tortured during the first Gulf War in 1991 in the same prison.

After the war Tice and the other POWs won a $959 million judgment after they sued the Iraqi government for pain caused by torture during their imprisonment. They were supposed to collect the money from Iraq's assets but the White House froze the assets once the current war began and is now using them to rebuild Iraq

On June 4 the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit overturned the case, saying the soldiers can get nothing since Congress has not authorize lawsuits against foreign governments.

But now the Defense Department is looking for a way to compensate Abu Grahib prisoners and, although a specific plan has not be devised yet, Reid wants the soldiers to be compensated at the same time.

"The American POWs are back to square one," Reid said. "They have nothing except the permanent wounds which they suffered in Saddam's prisons...Nothing about this amendment prevents the Iraqis from being compensated; it just asks for some fairness. Our own brave service men and women are entitled to it."

Reid proposed an amendment to the Veterans Affairs spending bill last year to allow the POWs to collect the $959 million, but in December the amendment was stripped from the final version of the omnibus spending bill.

Reid said this time it should stay in since he tied it into the Iraqi situation, which he had not done before.