Government priorities shift away from tortured POWs

Hunter and his fellow servicemen sued Mr. Hussein's government under a controversial US civil law that allows citizens to hold governments of terrorist states accountable for terror acts against Americans. Since its passage in 1996, the law has had an uneasy tenure. Successfully used only four times in military cases - most recently in that of 241 marines killed in the 1983 bombing of their Beirut headquarters - it has been the focus of an ongoing struggle between Congress and the State and Justice Departments over sovereign immunity, or what happens when the findings of US courts conflict with foreign policy. John Norton Moore, a former counsel on international law to the State Department who's consulting in Hunter's case, argues his clients have gotten caught in the political crossfire.

Government lawyers are "fighting an old fight," he says, "and because of that they have closed their eyes to the extraordinary national security interests of the United States in deterring the torture."

Officials at the Justice and State departments, which are overseeing the administration's response to the POWs' case, decline to speculate on the case's symbolic significance to potential torturers. However, legal experts argue that the primary legal deterrent to torture isn't civil litigation - it's the fact that perpetrators and their governments can be tried and punished under international law.

The Justice Department is now seeking to overturn the POWs' case. If it fails, plaintiffs' lawyer Tony Onorato says, the men might still hope to collect damages someday, when the bill for Iraq's reconstruction has been paid and Iraqi oil money starts to wash up on US shores.

There's some precedent here too: A few US prisoners of war have received small sums for their injuries through national courts and international bodies. This past summer a US court awarded World War II POWs up to $10,000 each in taxpayer funds, and some of the plaintiffs in Mr. Moore's own suit received up to $10,000 from the United Nations Compensation Commission for injuries in the Gulf War.

Moore waves off such comparisons. "You cannot seek to deter torture by giving somebody the price of a used car," he says.

Though Hunter is primarily concerned with the money's symbolism to hostile nations, he concedes his share of the award - coincidentally, $1 million for every year he served - would come in handy. With it, he says he'd help start a fund for other POW-MIA families, and pay off his house and his kids' college bills.

But as he tells his children - two of whom are already enlisted and a third who plans to be - nobody goes into the military for the money. "It's a calling," he says. "It's the kind of life that says you are living a real life, if that makes sense."

Bruce Norton didn't serve with Hunter in Iraq - he got the shrapnel in his gut in Vietnam - but the retired major and author of eight books on Marine Corps history is of two minds about the POWs' case. "It is, in my world, the responsibility of the government to take care of those people who fight in its name," he says. On the other hand, nobody enlists expecting to sue for injuries sustained in wartime.

A tactical officer at The Citadel, Major Norton teaches American and military history. Both, he says, are full of instances when the country's laws have lagged behind its moral obligations.

"Ask any black man or woman who has followed the historical trail from Reconstruction to the present how long it has taken even to approach parity. This is a darn slow process," Norton says.

"But in the end," he says, "our moral obligations are what set us apart from our enemies."

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