Shaffer
12-08-03, 09:06 AM
Chief Warrant Officer Guy Hunter blacked out when the missile hit the plane, knocking the left engine off and forcing the pilot to eject them both. Hunter woke up with blood running down his face, his parachute open, falling toward the Kuwaiti desert.
It was his second mission, the second day of the first Gulf War in January 1991. And the two Marines were falling right into the Iraqi troops they had been targeting.
Hunter, now living a quiet retired life out in the country near Jacksonville, is one of 17 former prisoners of war who sued the Iraqi government in 2002 for the torture they survived. They wanted to punish the Iraqis -- and warn other countries that the United States would not tolerate mistreatment of POWs.
Court documents are heavy with the price they paid: Shattered jaws. Popped eardrums. Broken legs. Teeth cracked by jolts of electricity. Parasites, dysentery, malnutrition, humiliation. And the lingering emotional toll: bouts of anger, depression, night sweats.
In July, the POWs won nearly $1 billion in federal court against the government of Saddam Hussein, to be paid out of $1.7 billion in frozen Iraqi assets.
But now they have an unexpected foe: the U.S. government. The Bush administration says the money is needed to rebuild Iraq.
President Bush issued an executive order in March to convert most seized Iraqi assets into U.S. government assets. Then, after Saddam's government toppled, government attorneys successfully argued that because the money was now U.S. property, it couldn't be used to satisfy a judgment based on the 1996 law that allowed such suits against terrorist states. Now, the administration is quietly working to overturn the ruling entirely.
Some congressmen are trying to help the POWs, and their attorneys hope a compromise might be crafted with the White House. One proposal would offer the POWs a much smaller award, less than $300,000 total, paid by the United States instead of Iraq.
Tony Onorato, one of the POWs' attorneys, said they oppose that proposal. They want to punish Iraq, not take compensation from American taxpayers. They are willing to get the money later, after the rebuilding is done, from Iraqi oil revenues.
"We need to send a message that enough is enough," he said. "...They're trying to absolve Iraq."
Hunter's not too optimistic he'll see any of his family's $57 million-plus share.
"It doesn't look good," he said.
A lifelong calling
Hunter knew he wanted to be a Marine, growing up one of 11 children on a farm in Georgia, hearing stories about World War II and seeing his uncles go off to fight in Korea. He served four tours in Vietnam and trained to be an air observer, the guy behind the pilot. He loved it -- loved the people, loved the adventure, loved that his job wasn't a job but a calling, a way to do good in the world.
"You got to be a participant, not just an onlooker," he said last week, stretched out in a big leather chair at his comfortable brick home, his hair white now at 59 but still almost military-short.
He told the story of what happened to him in Iraq.
He had never taken a hit before the Persian Gulf War. He and Col. Cliff Acree flew a dawn raid on Jan. 18, 1991, to mark targets on Iraqi artillery. The missile ignited the OV-10, a twin-turboprop reconnaissance plane, and sent it plummeting. After parachuting out, he and Acree stumbled to their feet, staggered through the sand and almost immediately faced Iraqis with rifles.
The interrogations started slowly. Then they were taken to headquarters, blindfolded, handcuffed. "They beat the tar out of us," Hunter said.
Several times he could feel Acree slump against him, unconscious, and he blacked out, too, as the Iraqis kept hitting, kicking and clubbing them in time to martial music.
They were moved several times, never knowing whether they would be killed. Four times, someone put a gun to his head and pulled the trigger. The prison was silent, unless he could hear another POW being tortured. Hunter dreaded the sound of footsteps and the jingle of keys: It meant someone would be taken out for interrogation. He would huddle in the corner of his cell, praying.
And it was cold, freezing cold in January. He tried to warm himself with a urine-and-vomit-soaked blanket, to keep the infected sores on his legs and eye from getting worse and to stay alive on a few tablespoons a day of thin red gruel. Sometimes he would get a little bread. He was thirsty all the time. He tried to suck drops of water out of an old pipe.
He grew weaker. He watched a tiny strip of light from a slat in the wall overhead pass through his cell; when it got to his feet, he forced himself up and tried to walk.
He imagined himself at home with his wife and three children -- the youngest 7, the oldest 12 -- second by second. He could almost smell the coffee, taste the Half-and-Half and hear them talking about their day.
On the night of Feb. 23, an interrogator got angry with him and told him the next day they would ask him 10 questions. For every bad answer, they would take off a finger. Hunter crawled back to his corner and dreamt he was home, driving his car with no fingers. He was turning the pages of one of the histories or mysteries he liked to read, with no fingers.
But their building was bombed that night.
He was lucky. The bombs had delayed fuses, so they dropped through the building -- past the POWs locked on the top floor -- down to the lowest level, where the Iraqis had run for shelter.
The war was almost over.
Home but harmed
Mary Hunter had been told her husband was missing in action. Then one morning when she came home from Mass she saw what the rest of the world saw: A videotape, released by the Iraqis, of a few POWs. One was Guy Hunter. She put her face right next to the screen, staring at him, and then she started praying all over again.
Finally, he came home.
After a month and a half in Iraqi prisons, he was free. A newspaper photo of Hunter and Acree returning -- Acree almost swallowed by his wife's hug, Guy and Mary Hunter just about to kiss -- hangs on the Hunters' wall.
Now, more than 10 years later, Hunter still has nightmares every night, still hears cell doors clanging shut. He still has numbness in his hands and arms from the tight handcuffs. He still feels hungry all the time, as if he can never be sure of his next meal.
But he enjoys life, he said.
He retired from the Marines in 1994, after more than 30 years of service. He taught algebra for a bit, still substitute-teaches some and volunteers at a nearby middle school. He and Mary take long walks every day. He fills in the crossword puzzle at lightning speed, has great parties for family reunions (this year: togas) and even wishes sometimes he could enlist again.
He's proud of his children. His two oldest are in the Navy, his daughter in a helicopter squadron, his son on a nuclear submarine. His youngest daughter plans to join the Marines. In spite of what happened to him -- or maybe because of it -- his family is deeply committed to serving their country.
Hunter doesn't pay too much attention to the twists and turns of the lawsuit, which another POW asked him to join a couple of years ago. The verdict for him alone was $32 million; his wife and children would get another $25 million total. He'd pay off debts -- his youngest daughter's in college now -- and replace his '84 Chevy Blazer, he said. He and the other POWs would use the punitive damages to set up a foundation to help POW families.
When Mary Hunter talks about how the torture has affected her husband and her family, her voice gets unsteady. It feels strange to disagree with the Bush administration, she said. "All it would take would be his OK to make things right," she said.
In a White House media briefing last month, spokesman Scott McClellan repeated the same answer when asked whether the administration was blocking the payment: "There's simply no amount of money that could truly compensate these brave men and women for what they went through and for the suffering that they went through at the hands of Saddam Hussein."
Guy Hunter's brother Junius, who lives in Raleigh, said, "It's all politics, money and politics, and it always will be."
Guy Hunter isn't angry, like some of the POWs and their families. He's disappointed.
He believes in the principles behind their claim, but once again he puts his country before himself.
"I'm upset with them for this particular thing," he said, "... but in the grand scheme of things, we're nothing, compared to what they're doing in Iraq."
It was his second mission, the second day of the first Gulf War in January 1991. And the two Marines were falling right into the Iraqi troops they had been targeting.
Hunter, now living a quiet retired life out in the country near Jacksonville, is one of 17 former prisoners of war who sued the Iraqi government in 2002 for the torture they survived. They wanted to punish the Iraqis -- and warn other countries that the United States would not tolerate mistreatment of POWs.
Court documents are heavy with the price they paid: Shattered jaws. Popped eardrums. Broken legs. Teeth cracked by jolts of electricity. Parasites, dysentery, malnutrition, humiliation. And the lingering emotional toll: bouts of anger, depression, night sweats.
In July, the POWs won nearly $1 billion in federal court against the government of Saddam Hussein, to be paid out of $1.7 billion in frozen Iraqi assets.
But now they have an unexpected foe: the U.S. government. The Bush administration says the money is needed to rebuild Iraq.
President Bush issued an executive order in March to convert most seized Iraqi assets into U.S. government assets. Then, after Saddam's government toppled, government attorneys successfully argued that because the money was now U.S. property, it couldn't be used to satisfy a judgment based on the 1996 law that allowed such suits against terrorist states. Now, the administration is quietly working to overturn the ruling entirely.
Some congressmen are trying to help the POWs, and their attorneys hope a compromise might be crafted with the White House. One proposal would offer the POWs a much smaller award, less than $300,000 total, paid by the United States instead of Iraq.
Tony Onorato, one of the POWs' attorneys, said they oppose that proposal. They want to punish Iraq, not take compensation from American taxpayers. They are willing to get the money later, after the rebuilding is done, from Iraqi oil revenues.
"We need to send a message that enough is enough," he said. "...They're trying to absolve Iraq."
Hunter's not too optimistic he'll see any of his family's $57 million-plus share.
"It doesn't look good," he said.
A lifelong calling
Hunter knew he wanted to be a Marine, growing up one of 11 children on a farm in Georgia, hearing stories about World War II and seeing his uncles go off to fight in Korea. He served four tours in Vietnam and trained to be an air observer, the guy behind the pilot. He loved it -- loved the people, loved the adventure, loved that his job wasn't a job but a calling, a way to do good in the world.
"You got to be a participant, not just an onlooker," he said last week, stretched out in a big leather chair at his comfortable brick home, his hair white now at 59 but still almost military-short.
He told the story of what happened to him in Iraq.
He had never taken a hit before the Persian Gulf War. He and Col. Cliff Acree flew a dawn raid on Jan. 18, 1991, to mark targets on Iraqi artillery. The missile ignited the OV-10, a twin-turboprop reconnaissance plane, and sent it plummeting. After parachuting out, he and Acree stumbled to their feet, staggered through the sand and almost immediately faced Iraqis with rifles.
The interrogations started slowly. Then they were taken to headquarters, blindfolded, handcuffed. "They beat the tar out of us," Hunter said.
Several times he could feel Acree slump against him, unconscious, and he blacked out, too, as the Iraqis kept hitting, kicking and clubbing them in time to martial music.
They were moved several times, never knowing whether they would be killed. Four times, someone put a gun to his head and pulled the trigger. The prison was silent, unless he could hear another POW being tortured. Hunter dreaded the sound of footsteps and the jingle of keys: It meant someone would be taken out for interrogation. He would huddle in the corner of his cell, praying.
And it was cold, freezing cold in January. He tried to warm himself with a urine-and-vomit-soaked blanket, to keep the infected sores on his legs and eye from getting worse and to stay alive on a few tablespoons a day of thin red gruel. Sometimes he would get a little bread. He was thirsty all the time. He tried to suck drops of water out of an old pipe.
He grew weaker. He watched a tiny strip of light from a slat in the wall overhead pass through his cell; when it got to his feet, he forced himself up and tried to walk.
He imagined himself at home with his wife and three children -- the youngest 7, the oldest 12 -- second by second. He could almost smell the coffee, taste the Half-and-Half and hear them talking about their day.
On the night of Feb. 23, an interrogator got angry with him and told him the next day they would ask him 10 questions. For every bad answer, they would take off a finger. Hunter crawled back to his corner and dreamt he was home, driving his car with no fingers. He was turning the pages of one of the histories or mysteries he liked to read, with no fingers.
But their building was bombed that night.
He was lucky. The bombs had delayed fuses, so they dropped through the building -- past the POWs locked on the top floor -- down to the lowest level, where the Iraqis had run for shelter.
The war was almost over.
Home but harmed
Mary Hunter had been told her husband was missing in action. Then one morning when she came home from Mass she saw what the rest of the world saw: A videotape, released by the Iraqis, of a few POWs. One was Guy Hunter. She put her face right next to the screen, staring at him, and then she started praying all over again.
Finally, he came home.
After a month and a half in Iraqi prisons, he was free. A newspaper photo of Hunter and Acree returning -- Acree almost swallowed by his wife's hug, Guy and Mary Hunter just about to kiss -- hangs on the Hunters' wall.
Now, more than 10 years later, Hunter still has nightmares every night, still hears cell doors clanging shut. He still has numbness in his hands and arms from the tight handcuffs. He still feels hungry all the time, as if he can never be sure of his next meal.
But he enjoys life, he said.
He retired from the Marines in 1994, after more than 30 years of service. He taught algebra for a bit, still substitute-teaches some and volunteers at a nearby middle school. He and Mary take long walks every day. He fills in the crossword puzzle at lightning speed, has great parties for family reunions (this year: togas) and even wishes sometimes he could enlist again.
He's proud of his children. His two oldest are in the Navy, his daughter in a helicopter squadron, his son on a nuclear submarine. His youngest daughter plans to join the Marines. In spite of what happened to him -- or maybe because of it -- his family is deeply committed to serving their country.
Hunter doesn't pay too much attention to the twists and turns of the lawsuit, which another POW asked him to join a couple of years ago. The verdict for him alone was $32 million; his wife and children would get another $25 million total. He'd pay off debts -- his youngest daughter's in college now -- and replace his '84 Chevy Blazer, he said. He and the other POWs would use the punitive damages to set up a foundation to help POW families.
When Mary Hunter talks about how the torture has affected her husband and her family, her voice gets unsteady. It feels strange to disagree with the Bush administration, she said. "All it would take would be his OK to make things right," she said.
In a White House media briefing last month, spokesman Scott McClellan repeated the same answer when asked whether the administration was blocking the payment: "There's simply no amount of money that could truly compensate these brave men and women for what they went through and for the suffering that they went through at the hands of Saddam Hussein."
Guy Hunter's brother Junius, who lives in Raleigh, said, "It's all politics, money and politics, and it always will be."
Guy Hunter isn't angry, like some of the POWs and their families. He's disappointed.
He believes in the principles behind their claim, but once again he puts his country before himself.
"I'm upset with them for this particular thing," he said, "... but in the grand scheme of things, we're nothing, compared to what they're doing in Iraq."