Ambassador Ryan Crocker is asking the State Department to authorize visas for Iraqi translators.

The American ambassador in Baghdad, Ryan C. Crocker, has asked the Bush administration to take the unusual step of granting immigrant visas to all Iraqis employed by the U.S. government in Iraq because of growing concern that they will quit and flee the country if they cannot be assured eventual safe passage to the United States.

Crocker's request comes as the administration is struggling to respond to the flood of Iraqis who have sought refuge in neighboring countries since sectarian fighting escalated early last year. The United States has admitted 133 Iraqi refugees since October, despite predicting that it would process 7,000 by the end of September.

If I didn’t know better I’d suspect Ambassador Crocker of being a defeatist. What possible need is there for visas to evacuate translators if the situation is Iraq is getting better and better? With Generalissimo Field Marshal Fred Kagan’s excellent surge escalation being implemented so ably by GEN Petraeus why would we even be thinking of granting visas to translators unless Ambassador Crocker knows something you and I don’t know.

Perhaps Ambassador Crocker is being compelled by Denmark’s example.

Denmark has secretly airlifted about 200 Iraqi employees and their relatives out of Iraq to prevent them from being killed after the Danes withdraw their ground forces later this summer, the Danish government said Friday.

Interpreters and other employees of foreign forces are prime targets for Sunni insurgents and Shiite militias who accuse them of being collaborators with the Americans.

The last of three secret flights departed Friday before dawn with 80 Iraqis on board, Jakob Winther, a Defense Ministry spokesman, told The Associated Press.

Last month, Denmark's center-right government said it would offer visas to Iraqi employees who wanted to apply for asylum.

Ambassador Crocker makes an emotional appeal:

"Our [Iraqi staff members] work under extremely difficult conditions, and are targets for violence including murder and kidnapping," Crocker wrote Undersecretary of State Henrietta H. Fore. "Unless they know that there is some hope of an [immigrant visa] in the future, many will continue to seek asylum, leaving our Mission lacking in one of our most valuable assets."

Crocker's two-page cable dramatizes how Iraq's instability and a rapidly increasing refugee population are stoking new pressures to help those who are threatened or displaced. As public sentiment grows for a partial or full American withdrawal, U.S. Embassy officials are facing demands from their own employees to secure a reliable exit route, and the administration as a whole is facing pressure from aid groups, lawmakers and diplomats to do more for those upended by the war.

And, anyway, Blackhawk helicopters can carry more passengers than Hueys.