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Re: Former Iraq POW Recalls Bad Times

From: POW-MIA InterNetwork

Date: March 23, 2003

"Former Iraq POW recalls bad times

CHICAGO SUN-TIMES

Troy Dunlap: Was captured during first Gulf War

  Troy Dunlap watches the events of Iraq with rare perspective. Twelve years ago, he was a prisoner of war held by Saddam Hussein's forces in Iraq.

  As a POW, Dunlap was beaten and burned, treatment that led him and other former American POWs in Iraq to sue Saddam.

  Still, Dunlap, a correctional officer at Stateville, says , "I wish I was over there now."

  That's the old Army sergeant in him talking. As a 20-year-old, he was aboard a search-and-rescue helicopter when it was shot down Feb. 27, 1991, killing five of its eight-member crew. Shortly after being captured, an Iraqi soldier clicked what turned out to be an unloaded gun at his temple while another shouted, "Kill him!"

  Dunlap was tied to a chair and wrapped in a kerosene-soaked blanket. Civilians were allowed to hit and spit at him. He was kicked in the legs and head and the back of his neck was scorched with hot spoons.

  Now 31 and living in Plainfield with his wife and four kids, Dunlap is addicted to CNN's war coverage. When he's home, he watches it. When he's at work, he tapes it. It feeds his curiosity about Iraq. It also feeds his nightmares.

  More and more lately, Dunlap says he's been seeing the Iraqi guards in his sleep and hearing their shouts in the middle of the night. "I feel like I'm being kicked and yelled at," he says. All of the war news on TV and all of the war talk at work has caused him to break out in a rash.

  He's 100 percent behind President Bush. Despite the risks, he considers getting rid of Saddam unfinished business from his own Gulf War. "It could get pretty ugly," he allows. He's particularly worried about a soldier cousin serving in the Middle East.

  "He's like me: gung-ho, a hard-charger."

  Dunlap flies a flag with a yellow ribbon from the back of his pickup truck and frets that "people don't seem to be supporting this like they should be."

  The lawsuit that he and 17 other Persian Gulf War POWS filed last April, seeking hundreds of millions of dollars in frozen Iraqi assets, is winding its way through a Washington court. The former POWs describe beatings with pistols, weighted rubber hoses, blackjacks and steel-toed boots. The suit was provided to Iraqi representatives, but they did not respond. The U.S. Treasury has frozen a reported $2 billion in Iraqi assets.

  Dunlap's 10-year-old son has become a war buff of sorts.

  "He asks me, 'Will there be more POWs?'" says Dunlap. Dunlap, the father, answers, "I hope not."

  But Dunlap, the former prisoner and soldier, thinks, "There probably will be.

© 2003 Digital Chicago & Hollinger International Inc. "