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Originally posted by bilmore
But, recover from whom? SH? I hear he's broke. The Iraqi people? They've got their own butcher's bill to submit. A central concept of tort law (well, in the olden days) was that you can only recover from a tortfeasor. If these guys should prevail, why should any government go along with the odious debt concept and cancel Iraq's debts incurred for the aggrandizement of SH?
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Think about what you're saying. The only reason governments are negotiating to "cancel" Iraq's debts is because the debts are owed by the nation, not just by Hussein, and the nation is still on the hook. Indeed, the article I linked to makes this clear, and suggests that our own government is supporting the claims of (e.g.) Kuwait against the Iraqi government. Why Kuwait and not U.S. soldiers who were tortured?
To answer your last question, other governments are cancelling Iraq's debt out of beneficence (i.e., it's a form of aid), and realism (some of those debts are huge).
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We are against torture. We deposed SH partly on that basis. In other words, we got the "social justice" that the plaintiffs claimed to be seeking already. Now, you want the co-victims to pay for our guys' verdicts? I can't reconcile a discussion of rights with that approach. If Joe runs me down with his car, yeah, I should have a "right" to compensation, but not from Sally, who Joe ran over last week. The "right" doesn't trump the "just".
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I understand your rationale, but it doesn't have anything to do with what the court decided or what our own government is saying in this case. Those soldiers were not tortured by a private conspiracy. They were tortured by agents of the Iraqi government. And subordinating those debts in the way that our own government has advocated sends a pretty clear message that opposing torture is not its highest concern.
