White House Turns Tables on Former American POWs By David G. Savage, Times Staff Writer

The Bush administration is fighting the former prisoners of war in court, trying to prevent them from collecting nearly $1 billion from Iraq that a federal judge awarded them as compensation for their torture at the hands of Saddam Hussein’s regime. …

Many of the pilots were tortured in the same Iraqi prison, Abu Ghraib, where American soldiers abused Iraqis 15 months ago. Those Iraqi victims, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld has said, deserve compensation from the United States.

But the American victims of Iraqi torturers are not entitled to similar payments from Iraq, the U.S. government says.

“It seems so strange to have our own country fighting us on this,” said retired Air Force Col. David W. Eberly, the senior officer among the former POWs. …

“Our government is on the wrong side of this issue,” said Jeffrey F. Addicott, a former Army lawyer and director of the Center for Terrorism Law at St. Mary’s University in San Antonio. “A lot of Americans would scratch their heads and ask why is our government taking the side of Iraq against our POWs.”