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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.

David Kuo joined the White House staff in January 2001 and left in December 2003 as deputy director of the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives. He lodged his complaints in an essay published Monday on the website beliefnet.com.

Kuo wrote that he was "saddened" by the administration's failure to fully fund the faith-based initiative — hailed by Bush since the 2000 campaign as a centerpiece of his effort to transform the social welfare system.

Instead, Kuo said, the faith-based initiative was "a whisper of what was promised."

The initiative was created to direct money to religious organizations that Bush contended were more effective than government bureaucracies in helping the needy.