Viktor Bout to the rescue

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After years of championing the cause of former Iraqi employees of the Coalition Provisional Authority and pushing the United States to arrange their evacuation, The New Yorker's George Packer thinks he may have finally found the man for the job: recently arrested international arms dealer Viktor Bout.

Here's a modest proposal [...] why don't the American prosecutors eager to put Bout on trial cut a plea bargain in which he would use his worldwide cargo business to conduct an airlift like Britain's (and Denmark's last year), flying America's Iraqi friends in his fleet of Antonovs and Ilyushins across the world to Guam for processing and eventual resettlement. It would be a kind of community service on Bout’s part, atonement for his large role in worldwide atrocities over the past fifteen years and the beginning of his rehabilitation. It would also give the U.S. government a way to make up for using Bout as an arms trafficker to Iraq. It would save taxpayer dollars. And finally, after a year of delay and failure by American officials, we'd have a man eminently capable of getting the job done.

Packer's tongue is firmly in cheek here, but Bout is actually no stranger to humanitarian work. In Douglas Farah and Stephen Braun's 2006 FP story, "The Merchant of Death," the authors recount how Bout's planes have flown missions for the World Food Program, delivered supplies to tsunami-devastated Sri Lanka, and conveyed peacekeepers to Rwanda and Somalia. Ironically, these missions are what tipped authorities off to his illegal activities.

For more on the Bout arrest, check out our recent Seven Questions interview with Farah.