Posted on 02/21/2003 5:03:00 AM PST by at bay
Human Shields, No Résumé Needed
AGHDAD, Feb. 20 — A rather jaunty sign advertising the grimmest of tasks was pinned up on a small notice board labeled "Human Shields" in the airy lobby of the Andalus Hotel Apartments here this morning.
It sought three additional volunteers to join the 13 already committed to living at the Baghdad South Power Plant to try to prevent its being bombed in the event of war. "There is no more important place for a shield to be," the notice read.
Volunteers from half a dozen nations expect to move into a large, collective dormitory room on Sunday at the power plant, a site they said was suggested to them by the Iraqi government. Since arriving earlier this month they have been touring hospitals, water treatment plants and other installations critical to the civilian population.
"They have shown us a number of sites and one of them was this power station," said Godfrey Meynell, a 68-year-old antiwar activist from Britain. "I have been pushing for this site because it seems to me that if the electricity is cut, then water treatment suffers, hospitals suffer. Of course America appears to have become so immoral now that there are few chances of it making it the slightest bit of difference."
Like much of the current confrontation with Iraq, the issue of human shields carries an echo from the Persian Gulf war of 1991. After its 1990 invasion of Kuwait, the Iraqis rounded up hundreds of oil workers, bankers and other expatriates, forcing them to live for months at scores of sites including Iraqi military bases and industrial plants. They were eventually released, before the war.
The United States has warned repeatedly that even though the shields this time are volunteers, their use would still be considered a war crime. "Deploying human shields is not a military strategy, it's murder, a violation of the laws of armed conflict and a crime against humanity, and it will be treated as such," Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said on Wednesday.
The participants took exception. "That is ridiculous," said Ken Nichols O'Keefe, a 33-year-old gulf war Marine veteran who initiated the idea. "They are not using me. I am here voluntarily. What is Saddam Hussein supposed to say? `No, they can't do it'? "
Earlier this month, Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz said the foreign volunteers were welcome. "They should come and set themselves up around places that we need to survive, to aid civil defense," he said.
The Iraqi government is paying to house the volunteers in a smattering of small hotels around downtown Baghdad and setting up free international telephone lines and special Internet access so they can lobby the folks back home.
Western diplomats are unsure, though, that the Iraqi government, once besieged, will want the public relations headache the shields will undoubtedly carry, and some of the volunteers themselves have their doubts.
"We fear they will keep us together and then push us out at the last minute," Mr. Meynell said.
Others have become aware of the sinister side of what some say they naïvely interpreted as a kind of extraordinary war protest. "I think the Iraqi government is potentially putting us in a dangerous position," said a young Australian who said he had decided to leave.
The shields stress that they came to protect civilians and not to support the Iraqi government, but the Iraqis inevitably blur such distinctions.
One American peace advocate recalled a typical march where the Westerners were chanting antiwar slogans and were suddenly joined by dozens of Iraqis hoisting pictures of Mr. Hussein. "It changed the spirit of the march," said a recent college graduate who is one of the volunteers. "That wasn't what we expected."
The number of human shields remain fluid.... Organizers brashly predict that the numbers will catapult to the thousands.
As Sir Isacc Newton once said:
"What goes up, must come down."
Brain cells.
Magnificent things.
Everybody should have some.
That would be treason, except that O'Keefe has already renounced his U.S. citizenship.
Earlier this month, Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz said the foreign volunteers were welcome. "They should come and set themselves up around places that we need to survive, to aid civil defense," he said.
And that is a very clear violation of the Geneva Convention.
I wonder if "changing the spirit" is code for "revealed our true intentions"?
What can I say? Leaves me speechless.
Except the Iraqis won't let them leave!
They run in, they run back out...
This article is priceless. Nothing like a brush with the real 3rd world to focus the heretofore unused mental processes.
Yeah! When has Saddam Hussein ever denied anyone the right of free expression? Get real!
Sign up today and win one of these spiffy shirts.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.