Washington, D.C.
The Bush administration is trying to stop 17 Gulf War veterans from collecting on a billion-dollar lawsuit they won against the former government of Saddam Hussein. The former soldiers were captured and tortured in Iraq in 1991. A federal judge ruled last summer that they should receive frozen Iraqi assets as compensation. White House officials have challenged the decision, saying that the money belongs to the Iraqi people, not Saddam, and that it should be used to rebuild the country. “The administration wants $87 billion for Iraq,” said David Eberly, a retired Air Force colonel who was shot down. “The money in our case is just a drop of blood in the bucket.”
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