Posted on 02/21/2003 12:33:36 PM PST by knak
A rather jaunty sign advertising the grimmest of tasks was pinned up on a small notice board labelled ``Human Shields'' in the airy lobby of the Andalus Hotel Apartments in Baghdad Thursday morning.
It sought three additional volunteers to join the 13 already committed to living at the Baghdad South Power Plant to try to prevent it's 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 dorm room tomorrow 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 anti-war 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 earlier Gulf War. 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,'' Defence Secretary Donald 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 defence,'' 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.
Others have become aware of the sinister side of what some say they naively 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.
Change the "or" to "and" and you've got it.
Stay safe; stay armed.
Eaker Freeper Status
F***ing Traitors...
Doesn't this make them enemy combatants, or at the very least providing aid and comfort to the enemy.
I hope each one catches a JDAM with their teeth.
These "shields" are accepting room and board from the Iraqi government in return for lobbying US citizens on Iraq's behalf. Tell me how they ae not traitors.
Yes, pinhead. He's a dictator, remember?
Yes.
No, you were putting you in a dangerous position to begin with. Guess you must have missed the memo.
What an array of absolute morons.
Mebbe there really is something to Darwin's theory.....
Many, and more probably, most of the aging protesters will tell you that they went, not for the cause, but because that's where the action was. It was hip. The Gen-Xers have proven time and time again their ignorance and stupidity (Just watch MTV for a few minutes) why would anyone believe they would actually give this impending war a rational thought?
I knew quite a few people when I was growing up that would have jumped at this opportunity for adventure. (Of course, they probably would have ignorantly packed their boards and wetsuits...)
The author forgot "evil".
I'd have to go with evil.
Not to mention racist.
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