Warning: Fecal matter impact immanent...
Posted on 03/03/2003 5:53:51 AM PST by kattracks
London (CNSNews.com) - More than a quarter of the "human shields" who traveled to Baghdad along with a former U.S. Marine have decided to leave because of safety concerns, a spokesman for the Truth Justice Peace Human Shield Action campaign said Monday.
John Freeman, the group's U.K. spokesman, said that Iraqi authorities had told the shields to set up camp at power plants, oil refineries and water purification plants, while many volunteers preferred to be placed at schools and hospitals.
Around 70 shields out of approximately 200 to 250 in Baghdad have decided to leave, Freeman said.
"We've always had the position that each human shield must make up their own mind, according to their own philosophy and assessment of risk," he said.
Freeman said that around 50 people from various countries are planning to travel to Baghdad to replace the volunteers that dropped out.
Reports from Iraq said that the protesters were told to either move to sites selected by Iraqi authorities or leave the country. Freeman said he couldn't confirm the exact reasons behind the mass exodus but said the situation in the Iraqi capital was "very fluid."
"It's very difficult to get hold of information coming out of Baghdad, a lot of what we're hearing is coming from volunteers on their way out," he said. "We're very much in the dark."
A spokesman for the Truth Justice Peace Human Shield Action in Amman, Jordan, said Monday that he had also lost contact with the shields and declined to comment further until communication was re-established.
The human shields set off from London in late January led by Ken Nichols O'Keefe, a former serviceman who fought in the first Gulf War and who later called enlisting in the Marine Corps "the most ignorant act of my life."
O'Keefe said he wanted 10,000 volunteers to travel to Iraq, a number that he claimed would make military action impossible.
"The only way this will work is if we get enough bodies down there," he told CNSNews.com shortly before the convoy of buses and taxis left Britain. Most of the volunteers were Britons, other Europeans and Middle Easterners.
The group was beset by difficulties including mechanical failures, extreme weather and visa troubles along the 3,000-mile route. O'Keefe, who has renounced his U.S. citizenship and travels with a "citizen of the world" passport, was stopped at several border crossings.
Shortly after the volunteers arrived in Baghdad, the British Foreign Office advised all U.K. nationals to leave Iraq.
'Terrible dictator'
During the 1991 Gulf War, Saddam forcibly held Western hostages as human shields after invading Kuwait. U.S. officials have said that the use of human shields by Iraq would be considered a war crime.
On Friday, the head of Sweden's largest peace organization urged the shields to leave Iraq.
The Associated Press reported that Maria Ermanno, chairwoman of the Swedish Peace and Arbitration Society, criticized the volunteers for accepting financial support from Saddam Hussein.
"To go down to Iraq and live and act there on the regime's expense, then you're supporting a terrible dictator. I think that method is entirely wrong," Ermanno said.
See previous story:
Ex-US Marine Organizes 'Human Shields' In Iraq (24 Jan. 2003)
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bwahahahhaahhaahaa
this should be everlasting proof that these folks are complete idiots.
Woody, you c'vists need to develop another acronym like tulip but for the numbnutz in the world.
Instead of "T" you can go with TI for "total idiot"
You can say that again...
Let's see, he wanted 10,000 and got 200, and 70 of them are abandoning ship. That's a slip from 2% to 1.3%. His numbers are moving in the wrong direction.
May he should send a recruiter to Hollywood to find more volunteers.
How do they get into Iraq that easily? What is it, you just go to England hop on a plane and that's it? Wow, and you get money to do it.
10,000 people? Aren't there already MILLIONS of Iraqi civilians there?
This is what chaps me about these human shields... they honestly believe that their (mostly) Caucasian Westerner blood is worth more than that of the local population. In other words, they're bigots.
I'd personally much prefer to see these Clymers die, compared to Iraqis. The Iraqis have no choice, for the most part, while the human shields CHOOSE to align themselves with the Butcher of Baghdad.
Yeah, go ahead post me by that installation.
Warning: Fecal matter impact immanent...
Power plants and oil refineries are legitimate targets. Water purification plants should be off the table, IMHO.
But remember that John Freeman is probably lying after being lied to himself. It's like a giant game of "Liar Telephone". These morons are probably being placed in front of every sensitive military installation in Bagdad.
The smart ones (speaking reletively, of course) figured out that Saddam wants them dead. And when Saddam wants somebody dead, they have a tendency to wind up dead, at least in Iraq.
When a soldier points a gun at you and tells you to camp next to a military target, it does not take a lot of imagination to see that soldier shooting you in the chest and tossing you in the nearest crater once the bombs start falling. Saddam will have his propaganda victory, one way or another.
Paid volunteers. An oxymoron to describe a group of morons. It should be easy to convict the professionl, PAID shields for treason. The Americans, anyway.
Says it all...
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