Why Do The Supreme Court and President Bush hate American Servicemen so much?

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=578&e=3&u=/nm/20050425/ts_nm/court_iraq_prisoners_dc

Supreme Court Rejects Appeal by 1991 POWs in Iraq

By James Vicini

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Seventeen American prisoners of war in the 1991 Gulf War failed on Monday to get the U.S. Supreme Court to review of a ruling that threw out a nearly $1 billion judgment against Iraq, Saddam Hussein and the Iraqi Intelligence Service.

The justices refused to review a U.S. appeals court ruling that dismissed the lawsuit by the 17 servicemen and by 37 of their immediate family members on the grounds they could not bring the case under the law at issue.

Bush administration attorneys opposed the appeal by the POWs and argued the lawsuit had been properly dismissed. President Bush had determined such judgments "would seriously undermine funding for the essential tasks of the new Iraqi government," they said.

The lawsuit was filed in April 2002 under a 1996 federal law that allows lawsuits by U.S. citizens against state sponsors of terrorism. The servicemen said they had been brutally tortured while held captive by Iraq during the war.

Iraq never responded to the lawsuit. Several months after U.S.-led forces ousted Saddam, a federal judge in July 2003 awarded the plaintiffs $653 million in compensatory damages and $306 million in punitive damages.

Two weeks after the ruling, the U.S. Justice Department sought to intervene in the case.

Department attorneys argued the 1996 law no longer applied and they cited an emergency appropriations law adopted by Congress in April 2003 that authorized Bush to suspend sanctions against Iraq and to take it off the list of state sponsors of terrorism.

APPEALS RULING

The appeals court ruled the plaintiffs were not legally entitled to the judgment.

It said the law on foreign sovereign immunity and one of its previous ruling made clear such lawsuits cannot be brought against a foreign state or a leader who acts in an official capacity.

Attorneys for the plaintiffs appealed to the high court.

A U.S. citizen who has been tortured by a state sponsor of terrorism can bring a case against a foreign sovereign under state or federal law or for violating international legal norms against torture, they said.

"This cases raises important and recurring questions concerning the ability of U.S. citizens who are victims of state-sponsored terrorism to seek redress against terrorist states in federal courts," they said.

A bipartisan group of 20 members of Congress and a group of former national security officials supported the plaintiffs.

Acting Solicitor General Paul Clement of the Justice Department said further review of the case by the Supreme Court was unwarranted.

"Subjecting Iraq to suit under (the 1996 law) served the United States' foreign policy interests by threatening large damage awards for the wrongs of the Hussein regime, in the immediate aftermath of the removal of that regime by military force, such judgments would hinder crucial foreign policy objectives," he said.

The Supreme Court rejected the appeal without comment or recorded dissent.

 

If he's holding hands with him before the meeting, he probably promised a BJ for a couple of beneficial turns of the old Saudi oil spigot!

Restoring dignificationism to the White House...