William Safire seems to specialise in making counterproductive suggestions. A little while ago, it was his suggestion that a tame post-Saddam government would repudiate Iraq’s debts to any countries that were not enthusiastic supporters of the US. Now it’s his plan to interrogate Iraqi scientists outside the country. He says

Draw up his own list – the names and addresses of the leading 50 scientists are no secret – and then go and knock on their doors. Ask them to step into a helicopter, with families if desired, and transport them to a safe house outside the country for questioning.

The first interviewee should be obvious to longtime readers of this space: Rihab Taha, “Dr. Germs,” the British-trained biologist who has been running Saddam’s anthrax and botulism laboratories for nearly 20 years. In the mid-90’s, when a U.N. inspector caught her in a flat lie, she replied, “It is not a lie when you’re being ordered to lie.”

Would Dr. Germs and her oil-minister husband tell the truth now, if spirited out of Saddam’s circle? Unlikely; but if told their secret cooperation might ameliorate sentences at war-crimes trials, they might discreetly provide a few leads. Same with the smallpox virologist Hazem Ali, the anthrax expert Abdul Nassir Hindawi, the nuclear physicists Jaffar Dhia Jaffar and Mahdi Obeidi, all named in The Washington Post yesterday.

Even if these scientific Saddamites hang tough, such off-site interrogation of supposed Saddam loyalists would give cover to other Iraqi scientists

If I was an Iraqi scientist reading this, I can’t say I’d be keen to get on any helicopeters.