For Desperate Hostage Relatives, Visiting Iraq Has Become Matter of Life or Death : Captives: Defying Washington, 14 will leave for Baghdad in hopes of gaining the release of their loved ones.

During his 16 years as a Des Moines police officer, Tom Van Baale has put his life on the line for strangers many times. On Monday, he is taking a risk for a loved one: He is leaving for Iraq in hope of persuading President Saddam Hussein to release his father-in-law.

Dawn Bazner, of Palm Desert, Calif., also is keenly aware of the perils of entering a potential war zone where her husband is being held hostage. “But if I don’t go, and some of the women come back with their husbands, I don’t know if I can live with the consequences of that decision,” she says.

The two are part of a delegation of 14 relatives of American hostages in Iraq who are accepting Hussein’s invitation to visit their loved ones over the holidays. A second contingent of 30 relatives is poised to depart Dec. 19. Several dozen others may go later.

For the family members, the visit is a life-or-death mission. “If I don’t go, I may never see my husband again,” Bazner says.

Heart-rending as they may be, such ventures pose a serious problem for the Bush Administration. It regards the hostage family visits as counter to the national interest, yet it is reluctant to be too critical for fear that the issue could backfire on the White House.

The Administration repeatedly has said that travel to Baghdad can be dangerous and that family members who go are being manipulated by Hussein, whose occasional releases of hostages are seen as blatant attempts to divide the international alliance against Iraq.

A senior State Department official declined to comment on Monday’s trip, saying, “We don’t want to come across as being adversarial against any U.S. citizens.”

But as more and more relatives prepare to ignore stated U.S. policy in an effort to save their loved ones, their increasing visibility could well make them a force to be reckoned with as the public debate escalates over President Bush’s Persian Gulf policies.

“I’m not real happy with our government--they’re not doing anything to get our people out,” says Willie Carr, 47, a Richland Hills, Tex., woman who was taken captive with her husband, Gary, when they were in northern Kuwait, where he was working on an oil rig.

Like many foreign women and children in Iraq, Carr eventually was allowed to leave, but her husband is still a hostage of Hussein.

“The State Department should be glad we’re getting some of them out,” fumes one hostage’s wife who asks that she not be identified. “It’s just less for them to have to worry about.”

For many of the relatives, the decision to defy their own government was not made lightly. “Initially, my reaction was no, I would not go,” says Bazner, 37. “But emissaries from most other countries have gone and have gotten people out. And I’d like to have my husband home and be with our children again.

“Now, I genuinely believe that going is the right thing to do,” she says. “My husband’s fully aware that his own government is not going to negotiate, and he accepts that as par for the course. And so if that means I have to go to Baghdad as my own peace emissary, then I will.”

To be sure, not all the hostages have concurred with their relatives’ decisions to go to Baghdad. “My husband is not too happy about my going,” says one woman who asked that her name not be printed. “He’s scared to death. They (the Iraqis) are so unpredictable.”

At first, the woman went along with her husband’s wishes, but eventually she decided to go to Baghdad despite his reservations. “This has been a very traumatic experience,” she says. “It feels like you’re grieving, but yet there’s no death. You don’t know quite how to act.”

For all the flurry about how many hostages Iraq has released during the last few weeks, hundreds of foreigners--including more than 100 Americans--are still being held as so-called human shields at strategic sites. Hussein says he is holding them to discourage attack by U.S.-led forces. As many as 2,000 more foreigners are believed to be trapped in Iraq and Kuwait, forbidden to leave.

Kevin Bazner, 36, is being held at a military site. Like many other hostages, he has been allowed to call home with increasing frequency--in his case to Palm Desert, where his parents have a house where his wife and children have been staying.

The Bazners’ own home is in Kuala Lumpur, where he is a restaurant executive. They and their two children were taken hostage Aug. 2, the day that Iraq invaded Kuwait, when the jetliner they were on stopped to refuel in Kuwait. She and the children left in a refugee airlift in September.

In Los Angeles, Barbara Smiley is more optimistic than worried. “I feel really positive about this trip,” she says. “Good things have been happening, and we all hope more good things will happen when we get there.”

Edward Smiley, 42, arrived in Kuwait to begin a yearlong job as a database administrator just three days before the invasion. Since he was taken hostage, he has called his wife half a dozen times.

“Edward is looking forward to my going very much,” Barbara Smiley says. “He seems to be very positive. He said, ‘I’m not gonna get my hopes up too much.’ But he’s been given these little hints that, because we are going, perhaps something may happen.”

At Thanksgiving Day dinner, the extended Smiley family saw Edward Smiley on television. “He looked thin and grayer--and he’s got a beard,” his wife says. The worry and uncertainty of the last four months “have been like an empty hole in my stomach.”

As with nearly all the hostage families, the financial hardships brought on by the crisis are becoming increasingly pressing.

But Smiley has been more fortunate than some others. The Kuwaiti government sent her husband’s monthly paycheck, and their bank here in the United States has put a three-month hold on their mortgage.

Even so, Barbara Smiley still has had to buy health and car insurance, pay real estate taxes and, above all, huge monthly telephone bills. “On top of that,” she points out, “this trip doesn’t come cheap.”

The Iraqi government has said it will furnish the hostages’ relatives with room and board in Baghdad and will provide free, round-trip air transportation between Amman, Jordan, and Baghdad.

Still, the relatives--who live in such diverse places as California, Florida, Idaho and Texas--have to pay their own way to Jordan and back.

“This thing has really had an impact on our savings,” says Van Baale, who is a police sergeant. Earlier in the fall, Van Baale traveled to Washington to present a petition to the Iraqi Embassy calling for the release of his father-in-law--to no avail.

“It’s been a real financial burden,” he says.

As she prepared late last week to travel from Texas to New York, Willie Carr also was optimistic: “They said if we come in peace, not bearing arms, we will not leave empty-handed,” she said. “And I believe them. I’m reading into that what I want to.”

And Barbara Smiley is unrepentant, saying, “If propaganda is what Saddam is getting out of it, fine--if that’s what it takes.”