Of Course We Put Our Citizens First...

Administration Blocks Ex-Hostages' Bid for Damages From Iran

The hostages that were taken during the cultural revolution against the Shah of Iran and put the Ayatollah Khomeini and other ultra-conservative Shi'ite Islamic clerics in charge have been blocked from seeking legal suit and damages from the totalitarian state of Iran. The reason: political gamesmanship at the highest levels of idiocy. Read on...

At an emotional meeting this month at the State Department, steps from the office of Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, a group of former American hostages released by Iran a quarter of a century ago, accompanied by lawyers and some relatives, confronted two of Rice's most senior aides.

The families' grievance: Why has the Bush administration, which has labeled Iran one of the world's most dangerous regimes and has called the hostages American heroes, fought their efforts to win damages for their ordeal from the Islamic republic?

The answer is rooted in diplomatic obligations and a wariness about favoring one set of terrorism victims over others. U.S. officials express sympathy for the former hostages. But the administration has thwarted every effort in the courts or in Congress to win a monetary judgment against Iran, even as other victims of Iranian-linked terrorism have secured hundreds of millions of dollars in compensation.

Those attending the March 2 meeting said that Undersecretary of State R. Nicholas Burns and legal adviser John B. Bellinger III tried to keep the discussion civil but that anger spilled over. The wife of a former hostage exclaimed at one point: "You are bloodless!" The meeting broke up with Burns acknowledging the difficulty of the issues and saying he would be open to further discussions.

But last week the State Department objected when Rep. Brad Sherman (D-Calif.) tried to address the issue in a House bill that would maintain sanctions against Iran for its links to terrorism, forcing the lawmaker to withdraw his proposal.

"We have 52 of our finest Americans who were held hostage," Sherman said. "They go to court, and you know who appears against them? The State Department."

There is something fundamentally wrong when a government works against the best interest of its own citizens, especially those that were held hostage by a people that thought nothing about committing an act of war... and let there be no doubt about it... Storming an embassy and taking members of the embassy staff and others working in that embassy hostage is a recognized act of war. According to international law and precedent, an established embassy is US soil. Attacking an embassy is the EXACT equivalent to an invasion on our shores.

When terrorists attacked our shores on 9-11, we created a way for the victims of those events to seek compensation and declared a "war" on all terrorism. Under the banner of that "doctrine" we wrongly invaded a sovereign nation (actually two sovereign nations) and have pursued the perpetrators in an unrelenting manner. Can anyone explain to me why our own government would smack down legitimate efforts to make the bastards that invaded our embassy off the hook?

I am tired of the two-faced willy-nilly approach to foreign policy that President Bush seems to be putting forth in our name. We do things that have no legitimacy but block things that have legitimacy.

Q: Which one of us is so schizophrenic that we cannot stay in touch with reality?

A: Mr. Bush!