I had blogged this a couple of years ago (yes, as some of my old timey readers will attest, I do manage to blog -ahem- ahead of the power curve occaisionally). But this sure does bear repeating.

The latest chapter in the legal history of torture is being written by American pilots who were beaten and abused by Iraqis during the 1991 Persian Gulf War. And it has taken a strange twist.

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.

The rationale: Today's Iraqis are good guys, and they need the money.

The case abounds with ironies. It pits the U.S. government squarely against its own war heroes and the Geneva Convention.

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.

And is anyone all that surprised that the 1600 Crew would treat Veterans this way? Coming up next: Unka Karl unleashed the Abu Ghraib Vets for Truth to convince the sheeple that these guys weren't really captured and tortured, they just fabricated their capture and torture.

The Remarkable, All-Powerful Clenis™ made them do it, BTW.

--thanx to reader JT for reminding me that some scandals never die, they just rove around for awhile--