U.S. Taxpayers Pay Damages of Terrorism Home

New Law Bills U.S. Taxpayers for Terrorist Damage! As incredible as it may seem, a new law from our friends in Congress forces U.S. taxpayers to pay the cost of terrorism worldwide. Already, we've had to cough up hundreds of millions, including $41 million paid to Terry Anderson, held hostage in Lebanon for six years. Under the law, individuals can sue certain named nations, including Libya, Iran, and others, if they can show that they were injured by terrorist activity sponsored or assisted by one of the named nations. Ordinarily, nations cannot be sued by individuals. A legal doctrine known as "sovereign immunity" prevents individuals from suing nations. In the U.S., even states have sovereign immunity. The idea is that governments should be held accountable through political means - like revolution or voting. The new law requires the U.S. to keep track of the amount of damages awarded against the terrorist nations, but there is no way the U.S. will ever be able to collect on these claims. Assets belonging to the terrorist nations that are frozen in the U.S. can't be touched to pay the claims. There are three big problems with this law. First, we pay the cost of terrorism. This gives Osama bin Laden the power to raise taxes in the U.S. - just bomb a few more embassies! Second, the law is a lawyer employment act - lawyers specializing in these cases are charging 25% of the damages awarded as their fee. Good job if you can get it! The law is really just another unconstituional welfare program that uses the law to steal property from one group and give it to another. Most important, though, is that terrorist acts are really acts of war. There is no difference between Osama bin Laden hiring thugs to bomb a Marine barracks and Japan hiring thugs to drop bombs on Pearl Harbor. This type of state-sponsored attack is an attack on the U.S. - all of us - not just the unfortunate victims. The victims should not be left to hire lawyers, endure dragged-out trials, and then be robbed for 25% of the damage award. The U.S. should treat these attacks as what they are - acts of war. The next article, from Col. Oliie North, expands on this point. Message from a Marine: Treat terrorism as an act of war Olliver North, USMC(ret.) Should U.S. citizens be left to fight terrorism by hiring lawyers? Should U.S. taxpayers be forced to pay for the damage done by terrorists? One Marine doesn't think so: Last Wednesday [June 27, 2001], the House International Relations Committee took time from dithering over who will get to sue whom in a Patients bill of Rights and "declared war" against "an enemy threatening our shores." The focus of their ire: AIDS. As is too often the case, Congress missed the mark. In response to pleas from U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan, the committee voted 34-4 to increase AIDS spending overseas by a whopping $800 million - making the U.S. the No. 1 contributor to fighting the global "pandemic." Not that helping to defeat the deadly disease is wrong. It's just that when it comes to fighting other battles - where the U.S. is "Target No. 1" - Congress is reluctant to make the same bellicose declarations. It correctly surmised that doctors - in laboratories and in the field - ought to be the "front line troops" in the fight against AIDS. Why then, do both the legislative and executive branches conclude that when combating terrorism, lawyers are the weapon of choice? Unfortunately, they seem to believe that it's better to treat acts of terrorism as violations of law and ignore that they are also acts of war. On May 29, after a four month long trial, a New York City jury convicted four members of Osama bin Laden's Al-Qaeda terrorist organization on all 302 charges against them for their complicity in the Aug. 7, 1998 bombings of our embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, in which 224 were killed and nearly 5,000 wounded. The official line in Washington was that the convictions were "a great victory for counter-terrorism and bringing terrorists to justice." On June 21, FBI Director Louis Freeh announced the indictment of 13 Saudis and one Lebanese for their involvement in the 1996 bombing of the Khobar Towers complex in Saudi Arabia - an attack that killed 19 U.S. Air Force personnel. Mr. Freeh, without naming names, also pointed to the involvement of unidentified Iranian officials in the attack and expressed his "confidence that these criminals will be brought to justice." He then cleaned out his desk and retired from the beleaguered FBI. The next day, Osama bin Laden sought to reclaim top billing as the world's most feared terrorist. From somewhere in Taliban controlled Afghanistan, the 44 year-old fugitive Saudi millionaire released a video-taped message promising, "It's time to penetrate America and Israel and hit them where it hurts most." Bakri Attrani, a reporter with the Middle East Broadcasting Centre - a satellite TV station based in Islamabad, Pakistan - recorded the terrorist warlord bragging about the Oct. 12 bombing of the USS Cole in the Yemen port of Aden, which killed 17 sailors, and threatening "that the next two weeks will witness a big surprise. A severe blow is expected against U.S. and Israeli interests worldwide." The official U.S. response to this overt threat has been, at best, strange. The State Department issued a flurry of new travel advisories and then temporarily closed our embassies in Bahrain and Senegal. The Pentagon went even further, initially placing U.S. forces on heightened alert - "Threat Con Delta" - and then ordering a massive, hurried, and costly repositioning of ships, aircraft, and personnel - not so that they would be ready for a fight but to avoid casualties. In the Arabian [Persian] Gulf, the USS Constellation carrier battle group, including the guided missile cruiser Chosin, the guided missile destroyers Benfold and Stout, the Attack submarine Santa Fe and their support ships were ordered to sortie from port. A Marine expeditionary unit, ashore for a combined-arms training exercise in Jordan, was ordered to conduct an emergency backload, board the vessels of their amphibious ready group and stand out to sea from the port of Aqaba. In all, according to the U.S. 5th Fleet, headquartered in Bahrain, 66 aircraft, 20 ships and 9,909 sailors and Marines have been affected. All "nonessential" military air traffic, including supply and personnel transfer flights, were halted. In the Balkans, U.S. Army units were ordered to stand ready in a "force protection" mode. And U.S. Air Force and Navy squadrons in Turkey and Saudi Arabia, assigned to patrol the Iraqi "no fly zones," had to disperse their aircraft. Clearly, the man who fomented all this activity is undeterred by the threat of prosecution. It's time to stop treating Osama bin Laden like a bank robber in Peoria. He has declared war on the United States, and we should give him what he wants: war. Those who aid and abet his cause, like the Taliban in Afghanistan who have hidden him since 1996 and Saparmurat Niyazov in neighboring Turkmenistan, should be put on notice that we regard them to be his allies and treat them accordingly. We ought to overcome our reluctance to aiding resistance movements and start supporting Ahmad Shah Masud's Afghan United Front, solicit their help in pinpointing bin Laden and his fanatical followers and attack them - and not with lawyers. Instead, we should employ our considerable U.S. military power. If the third president of the United States and the 5th Congress could use the puny U.S. Navy to subdue the terrorists of their day - the Barbary Pirates - then surely the 43rd president and the 107th Congress ought to be able to do as well today. - Ollie North