Saddam’s Border Policy

Iraqis who spill information about Saddam Hussein’s deadly arsenal can expect hard consequences. Look no further than the recent arrest of Nasser Hindawi, the dictator’s top anthrax man. Hindawi was trying to flee the country, Iraq’s U.N. ambassador says. And that may be the last we’ll hear from Baghdad on the matter, barring an epitaph.

Hussein agreed in ending the Gulf War in 1991 that Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction would be destroyed under U.N. authority, professedly ending the threat that his biological and chemical devices and long-range missiles posed in the Middle East. Lest we forget, though, Hussein showed no hesitation in hurling missiles at Israel and Saudi Arabia during the Gulf War and at Iran during a 1980s war, and that’s to say nothing of his dropping chemical weapons on his Kurdish countrymen.

Check the box score and you can figure the likely fate of Nasser Hindawi. The last key Iraqi military man to flee the Baghdad authorities was Lt. Gen. Hussein Kamel Majid, a son-in-law of the dictator. Kamel and his family slipped across the border to Amman, Jordan, where he delivered chapter and verse on Iraqi armaments to U.N. officials, including the location of a chicken farm outside Baghdad where volumes of records on Hussein’s illegal weapons were stored. For reasons unknown, Kamel later returned to Baghdad and tried to make peace. What he got was a bullet.

U.S. authorities declined to say whether Washington tried to help Hindawi flee. His defection would have been quite a coup for the West, but it didn’t happen, and Hindawi, if he’s alive, must now reflect on the fate of Hussein’s son-in-law, who isn’t.