Somewhere near Baghdad International Airport is a U.S.-run prison with the stern designation "High Value Detention Site" and the jaunty name of Camp Cropper. It was in the news last week following reports of a visit by Iraq's new minister for human rights, Bakhtiar Amin, to the prison's most highly valued detainee, ousted Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, whose life has certainly come a cropper since a U.S.-led coalition invaded his country last year.
The visit pointed up an interesting disparity in addition to the obvious contrast between Mr. Hussein's former sumptuous life and his now greatly circumscribed one. (The man who used to move among several sprawling palaces occupies a 3-by-4-meter cell containing a fold-up bed, a table, an air conditioner, a single light bulb and a few books, according to Mr. Amin. He is in solitary confinement and has no television, radio or newspapers. Among his books is the Quran, which Mr. Hussein is said to be re-reading, but it would be nice if someone also gave him a copy of Hamlet, full of food for thought for a torture-happy former dictator: "I could be bounded in a nutshell and count myself a king of infinite space, were it not that I have bad dreams.")
Yes, Mr. Hussein doesn't have it so good anymore, as the Americans say. But then, he doesn't have it so bad, either, considering where he ended up. Camp Cropper has been in the news before, albeit on the fringes rather than in the headlines. Before last week, it wasn't known as a place where detainees could count on air conditioning, antibiotics, American muffins and the promise of a team of international lawyers, as Mr. Hussein apparently can.