Re: PGW Ex-POWs Angered Over Bush Refusal to Relase Court Award

Date: February 09, 2004

"Cash for pain: Gulf War POWs angered by government's refusal to release court award
By By Jeff Adair / News Staff Writer


He works part-time at a church in South Carolina and spends most of his mornings "trying to evaluate all the golf courses," he says kiddingly, around Myrtle Beach.

     It sounds like a pretty good, relaxing life for Jeffrey D. Fox, a 52-year-old Swansea native who retired from the Air Force in 1994 after a 20 year career.

     Life, however, has not been a bed of roses for Fox who was brutally tortured by Saddam Hussein's army during Operation Desert Storm, the first Gulf War.

     He was starved, beaten and kicked, and had a gun fired inches from his head, breaking both eardrums. His captors repeatedly hit the knee he injured while ejecting from his plane. Despite surgery and years of physical therapy, the knee has never fully healed and will likely have to be replaced.

     Fox, who keeps a positive attitude, also suffers from subthreshold posttraumatic stress disorder. The impatience caused by his experience as a POW has negatively impacted his career.

     "You don't have those kinds of things happen to you and remain the same person," said his sister, Pat Borden of Seekonk. "He doesn't have the same," she said, pausing. "He was always very funny. He's lost some of that sense of humor."

     Having nearly lost his life fighting for his country, the retired lieutenant colonel cannot understand why the Bush administration is blocking a court decision to pay millions to 17 ex-POWs from Gulf War I.

     Last summer, a U.S. district court judge said the Iraqi government was liable for $653 million in compensatory damages and $306 million in punitive damages.

     Each of the ex-POWs was awarded about $30 million, spouses $10 million, and parents, children and siblings, $5 million. There were 37 family members involved in the lawsuit, including Foxes brothers and sisters. The litigants have established a POW foundation, and have said that a portion of the award, if they ever get it, will help future POWs and their families.

     The ex-POWs are rich, but only on paper because the Bush administration says the more than $2.7 billion seized from Hussein is needed to rebuild the war-torn nation. The group is now suing the Department of the Treasury to get what they say is theirs.

     Last week was the deadline for the lawyers to file briefs, and oral arguments are scheduled for April 15 in the U.S. Court of Appeals in Washington D.C.

     "In all honesty, it's his administration," said Fox, noting that he does not point the finger of blame directly at President George W. Bush.

     "I do not personally believe that he was told, 'Mr. President, we have money to give back to the POWs and their families and that money is Iraqi frozen assets,'" said Fox, suggesting that Bush was probably told that the money had to go back to the Iraqi people.

     "I don't want to believe the commander in chief would have made that choice."

     Several of the ex-POWs, including Navy Commander Lawrence Randolph Slade whose grandmother lived on Oak Street in Wayland when his F-14 was shot down in Iraq on Jan. 22, 1991, are still on active duty and cannot speak publicly about the case.

     Local ex-POWs, are angered by situation.

     Even if a soldier was forced to work or beaten just one day, said John Powell of Waltham, "I think they should have the right to sue and they should get the money."

     Powell, who was a prisoner during the Korean War, lost 97 pounds in the 33 months he was held in captivity.

     The Gulf War prisoners concede that the few months they suffered was minute compared to the years many of their POW predecessors spent behind bars during World War II, the Korea War, and the Vietnam War.

     "The second world war vets from the the camps in Japan should get some kind of gratuity," said Powell. "Unfortunately, they didn't have the ability to sue."

     To correct an injustice, Congress in 1996 passed a law that allows torture victims to sue a terrorist state in a U.S. Federal Court. So, in the spring of 2002, 17 of the 21 Gulf War POWs filed a lawsuit against Saddam Hussein and Iraq.

     "Don't get me wrong," said Fox, "I would not take a penny if the money was coming from American citizens. I would back out of it and wouldn't be a part.

     "We're not talking about a bunch of derelicts who are trying to soak the American people. The source of the money was the nation of Iraq," he said.

     To the shock of the POWs, the Department of Justice has not only blocked their efforts to satisfy the judgment, but is now arguing in court that the case should be erased from the record entirely.

     The administration has been quiet, for the most part dancing around the issue, putting up a weak defense, say critics.

     Asked about the case during a recent press briefing, White House spokesman Scott McClellan did not answer the question.

     "There is no amount of money that can truly compensate these brave men and women," McClellan said during the briefing on Nov. 3.

     A reporter pressed several times on the administration's position. McClellan repeated "no amount of money," before saying it was determined by Congress and the administration "that those assets were no longer assets of Iraq, but they were resources required for the urgent national security needs of rebuilding Iraq."

     Several congressmen, including some Republicans, disagree with Bush and are working to broker a resolution. One idea that has been suggested is to cut the award to $1 million per person.

     Ironically, the POWs offered to settle the case for less money before the decision but the government declined, say the POWs' attorneys.

     Last November, Rep. Gregory Meeks, D-N.Y., and John Conyers, D-Michigan, introduced a resolution calling on Bush to use Iraqi assets to fulfill the terms of the court judgment.

     Plane struck by missile

     Fox can't forget he day his ordeal began, Feb. 19, 1991. He was flying a single seat A-10 Warthog fighter on a 1 1/2 hour flight, his 26th combat mission, hunting targets in southern Iraq.

     "No planes came into the kill box and it was about 9 o'clock, time to leave," he recalled. "I was heading south to Saudi Arabia when I was struck by a surface-to-air missile that took out my left engine."

     The plane rattled wildly out of control, forcing Fox to eject. He was unconscious coming down, waking up the second the plane hit the ground.

     "It nearly hit me," he said.

     On the ground and injured, Fox quickly unhooked his parachute and started to run. He radioed for help but was caught by Iraqi soldiers.

     He was kept at the Biltmore prison in Baghdad for half the time and the rest of his 15 days at a civilian prison in Joliet.

     The Iraqis violated the Geneva Convention by keeping prisoners at Biltmore because it was a military target. In fact, Allied forces, unaware there were POWs inside, bombed the site.

     "The first 30 to 40 hours, the treatment was OK," Fox said. "But as soon as I got to Basra that's when they started to knock me down, hit, spit, and yell."

     He underwent a lengthy interrogation. The interrogators, suspicious of his nationality, stripped him naked twice to ascertain whether he was circumcised.

     "They said I was a Jew. I told them I was a Catholic. They said I was a Jewish fighter pilot."

     Fox who has black hair and wore a dark black mustache looked more Arabic than Jewish, he said. He told his captors that he was born in Berlin where his father was stationed in the service.

     "I should have said Fall River instead of Berlin," he said.

     Fox was kept in solitary confinement in a small concrete cell. He had to sleep on the floor by a broken toilet with only one blanket to protect him against the cold and damp.

     Each day his captors fed him only a single ladle of thin red soup, sometimes with a piece of bread. He was given minimal drinking water. The water was very dirty and he contracted giardia. The combination of disease and starvation caused him to lose approximately 25 pounds while he was a POW.

     The other POWs reported similar treatment. Some were threatened with castration, urinated on, and starved.

     "They used electrical shocks on me," Lt. Col. Dale Storr, another POW, told CNN last year. "I had my shoulder dislocated, my nose was broken, my eardrum was perforated. I became violently ill during the interrogations with no access to a bathroom."

     Last November, Fox and other POWs appeared on "60 Minutes" and the New York Times wrote about their dilemma. However, their suit against the government hasn't received much public attention.

     "When I talk to people and tell them about it, they say, 'You've got to be kidding me,'" said Fox, who has three brothers who served in the military, and his deceased father, Joseph, was a World War II Army veteran.

     "I'm very upset," said Borden, whose husband was serving in Saudi Arabia when her brother was captured. "I can't believe our commander in chief would not give compensation to the POWs for the torture they sustained."

     Supporters say it makes no sense that the United States has pledged billions to reconstruct Iraq and has asked other nations to forgive debt, leaving the Middle East nation, rich in oil, entirely off the hook.

     "The amount of money we were rewarded is nothing compared to what we are sending over there," said Fox. "It won't be long before their oil wells are back up and the country is up and running.

     "In all honesty, it's not really about the money," he said.

     "We brought this case against Saddam Hussein and Iraq in order to start a movement to put an end to the torture of American POWs. We asked ourselves, 'If we don't do this, who will?'" said retired Lt. Col. Jeff Tice, another member of the POW group.

     "Congress passed the law that gave us a path to doing that, and as part of that, Congress also said that Iraqi assets should be used to pay the judgment because it only makes sense to make the perpetrators pay. But the U.S. government has blocked us despite our offers to compromise."

(Jeff Adair can be reached at 508-626-3926 or at jadair@cnc.com)
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