Marc Cooper is rightly outraged that the Bush administration is attempting to stop former American POWs during the 1991 Gulf War from collecting damages for being tortured by Saddam Hussein’s regime.

While I’m somewhat sympathetic to the administration’s argument that the new Iraqi regime needs the money to help it get on its feet, and I recognize that the law that the POWs sued under (the Anti-Terrorism Act of 1996) is designed mainly to deplete the assets of anti-American regimes like Cuba and Iran rather than for the purpose of securing any meaningful “justice,” I have to say this is an incredibly boneheaded decision, one that Congress would do well to force reconsideration of.