Ummmmmm... We once flattened - no, make that flattened and incinerated - entire cities full of blond, blue-eyed folk as white as Robert Byrd's sheets. And the Germans put up a helluva lot more fight than Iraq is going to, human shields or no.
Posted on 01/05/2003 3:56:44 PM PST by yankeedame
'Human shields' head for Iraq
Paul Harris
Sunday December 29, 2002
The Observer
A convoy of anti-war activists, likely to include dozens of British volunteers, will leave London next month to act as human shields protecting strategic sites in Iraq. The convoy to Baghdad is being organised by former US marine Kenneth Nichols, who served in the first Gulf war and won a combat medal but has now become a vociferous opponent of another Gulf conflict.
British protesters are also heading for the country in advance of any Anglo-American bombing.
Nichols, 33, aims to gather scores of volunteers together in London and lead the convoy on 10 January. It will drive across Europe, holding rallies in various capital cities and collecting other human-shield demonstrators along the way. It plans to travel via Amsterdam, Brussels, Paris, Zurich, Milan, Sarajevo, Istanbul and Syria to Baghdad.
He is hoping that the convoy will arrive in the Iraqi capital around 24 January, three days before President George W Bush is to make his decision on whether Iraq has complied with the UN weapons inspections, potentially triggering a US-led invasion.
Nichols is willing to put his own life on the line to stop a war. 'In going to Iraq I understand that I will likely not survive a US invasion,' he said.
Once in Iraq, members of the convoy will identify infrastructure targets for bombing, such as power stations, key bridges and roads, and deploy themselves as human shields in the glare of the international media.
'I don't think anyone will be happy about bombing somewhere they see being protected by North Americans or Europeans,' he said.
In the 1991 conflict, Nichols was serving in the 2nd Battalion of the Marine Corps. He was an infantryman on the road to Basra, where heavy Allied bombing killed hundreds of retreating Iraqi soldiers. He left the Marine Corps a year later.
His experience of war left him disillusioned with American foreign policy, and he is now a vociferous opponent of US foreign interventions. 'Part of the reason I want to go back is to apologise to the Iraqi people for what I was doing there the first time I was in their country,' he said.
Part-time law student Jo Wilding, 28, is one Briton who is heading for the region. She expects to fly to Baghdad on 10 January and then go to the southern city of Basra. 'There is something I can do there just by being a foreigner,' she said. 'If something does start when we are there, we will be able to document it.'
"From up here you all look like targets to me," --motto of the USAF pilots.
You've obviously never met me.
What a racist statement.
Absolutely. These people think they're really, really special. Maybe they should guess again.
Ummmmmm... We once flattened - no, make that flattened and incinerated - entire cities full of blond, blue-eyed folk as white as Robert Byrd's sheets. And the Germans put up a helluva lot more fight than Iraq is going to, human shields or no.
Sorry, you morons, the war will either be on or over by then. But you can still go afterwards with your brooms and dust pans to sweep up what's left of the floors at Saddam's palaces.
Leni
They must not know about the American civil war.
Think of it, Alec Baldwin and Barbra Streisand as human shields -- now that's something the country could truly rally around.
yankeedame, you picked the same line I did to respond to. This is what came to my mind:
"It will be kind of hard to identify you from the nosecone of a cruise missile."
Well, if they're going to do this right, they need an old school bus, cassette players hooked to huge speakers, many copies of Truckin' by the Dead to play over and over and . . .
Costume trunks full of fringed suede vests, ratty jeans, beads . . .
I hope they remember to pick up Hunter Thompson and Ken Kesey (is he still alive? my memory fails me . . .). No road trip is complete without a stoned writer to document it all.
sigh...
I hate the thought of any Marine, however misguided, getting killed by friendly fire.
But if in so doing he takes a few thousand nose-ringed, goateed, sprout-eating Sandalistas with him, I'd say he deserves a medal...
Now there's a thought to warm your heart. A bus full of liberals with a binge drinker that carries a .44 magnum.
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