Stranded human shields buses seek fare home (ROTFLOL!!!)

reuters ^ | 3-5-03

[Jimmyclyde]

Stranded human shields buses seek fare home

BEIRUT (Reuters) - Two red double decker buses and a white London taxi that ferried anti-war activists to Baghdad to serve as "human shields" are stranded in Beirut with their owner short the 3,400 pounds it costs to ship them home. The buses and taxi, dusty after a six-week overland journey that began at London's Tower Bridge, were plastered with signs saying "No to a war on Iraq" and "No to war, Yes to peace".

"The buses have to be shipped back. It's just not practical to drive them...I am not even really sure how much money I've got, but I'm sure it's not enough," said owner Joe Letts, adding that he would fly to London on Thursday to try to raise cash.

"I thought I would let people know it's a problem," he added, sitting in a makeshift kitchen on his bus in central Beirut.

Letts said he left London with 45 human shields of 10-12 nationalities, and picked up a dozen or so more in Turkey before arriving in Baghdad, where he spent a week sleeping in a power station hoping to prevent a possible U.S.-led attack.

"We were taken to see some of the installations that the Iraqis thought were suitable for protection," he said, adding that he had feared a bombing campaign could start at any time.

"We painted a huge sign on the roof saying human shields, so when any planes bombed the target, they'd see they were killing us -- Englishmen and Finns and Turks".

Some 50 other Swedish anti-war human shield activists who had travelled to Iraq began to leave on Monday, saying they had wanted to protect hospitals and schools but had been forced out to refineries, power plants and water works.

Letts said about 200 human shields, including many who travelled on his bus, remained in Baghdad when he left. But he said that although he stayed on as a shield for a week, he had no intention of staying in Baghdad for the duration of a war.

"I own these buses and they are my livelihood and my family's livelihood. And all along I was there really to take the people down and then come back," he said.

When he left London, he thought he had enough money to pay to ship the buses home, but ended up spending his personal finances to help pay for the trip.

"I had promised my wife I would get the buses home," he said. "If I don't get them home, we're absolutely stuck."

[okimhere]

I've laughed myself silly at these posts! Now, come on...level with me....this is a Saturday Night Live skit, right? You expect me to believe someone would paint a little sign on the roof for protection from skyhigh speedy jets???? Naaah....gotta be silly TV humor.

[SuziQ]

"The buses have to be shipped back. It's just not practical to drive them

They were driven TO Beirut, why can't they be driven back? What maroons!

[jackbill]

"We painted a huge sign on the roof saying human shields, so when any planes bombed the target, they'd see they were killing us -- Englishmen and Finns and Turks".

We've got a lot of "smart bombs" but I haven't heard they we have any that can read.

"I had promised my wife I would get the buses home," he said. "If I don't get them home, we're absolutely stuck."

Does he perhaps have Sean Penn's phone number?

[TigersEye]

KILL A HUMAN SHIELD FOR PEACE!

[CARepubGal]

I see pollution emitting from the KumBaYah Bus! The Horror!

[XHogPilot]

Borrowed from another FREEPER's post:
Strategic
Human
Insertion
Team:
Fostering
Obstruction,
Resistance, &
Barriers,
Rejecting
American
Interests, &
National
Security

[Arpege92]

LOL....may I suggest they use a camel to guide them out of Iraq.

[Question_Assumptions]

Maybe they can take a look around Lebanon while they are there and see the good works that the UN and peace have produced there.

[Lonesome in Massachussets]

Lookit at blue mist! Jeepers, these buses would be hauled off the road anywhere in the US. I think air-breathing citizens of London should pony up money to have them junked before they come back.

[kcvl]

The group of about 60 volunteers includes Britons, Americans, Spaniards, Brazilians, Australians and Israelis, ranging in age from 20 to 60.

The activists planned to drive day and night through Europe and Turkey, arriving at the Iraqi border by February 4 or 5, where they will be given entry visas by Iraqi officials, volunteer Sue Darling said.

On February 15, the caravan is expected to be joined by a bigger convoy of perhaps hundreds of volunteers, a participant told CNN.

"What we are intending to do is to make it politically impossible for President Bush and Tony Blair to have this war," said Joe Letts, owner of two of the buses and a driver.

Letts, a father of four, said the anti-war coalition asked for his help in planning the route to Baghdad. Letts then offered to lend his buses and himself to the cause.

The top levels of the buses have been converted to accommodate cots for the two-week journey. Letts' buses are red, but the third bus and the taxi have been painted white.

A white flag intended to symbolize peace was placed on the taxi's roof.

"We will run the risk of being maimed or killed, but it is simply the same risk that innocent Iraqis will themselves face," O'Keefe was quoted as saying in a December online interview.

"I would rather die in defense of justice and peace than 'prosper' in complicity with mass murder and war," he said.

O'Keefe renounced his American citizenship in 1999. Darling, 60, said she is a former British diplomat to the United Nations.

[Catspaw]

Do ya think the guy with the flute stocked up on lentils before he decided, then undecided to become a human shield?

Excuse me while I laugh until I hiccup.

[Reagan is King]

"We painted a huge sign on the roof saying human shields, so when any planes bombed the target, they'd see they were killing us -- Englishmen and Finns and Turks".

Hmm, so they are putting the brainless shields next to important military targets, and they put big signs on the roofs. Thanks! Now we can just aim for the signs and we're sure to hit a military installation.

Why, oh why, didn't some TV station send a camera crew along with these morons so we could have tons of laughs watching them turn into baskets cases as this thing drags on?

[WaveThatFlag]

A martyr's death? Geeze, that's a 15th century concept, dude. We just wanted to stop the bombing. Dying sucks.

Ya know?

Pass the bong.

FWIW, "bombing" (or "e-bombing") is current slang among today's counterparts to the hippies from the 60's for doing drugs (especially ecstasy).

[oyez]

That thing wouldn't be allowed on the streets of the good ole US of A. The Europeans want to dictate to us about emission standards, but they won't enforce their own.

[semaj]

He would have been better off parking them in Jordan.

[InvisibleChurch]

how are they going to get to northkorea

?

[turbojugend]

"They're the sons and daughters of well-off bankers / Tom Robinson's army of trendy wankers / Flared blue jeans and anoraks / With yellow streaks running down their backs." -The Business

I hope these silly hippies are nothing more than red and yellow streaks in a few weeks' time.

[Kaslin]

So the judas goat which encouraged other humans shields to sign up is now bravely running away.

I am sorry but shouldn't that say 'So the judas goat which encouraged other human shields to sign up is now cowardly running away."

What is so brave about getting others to sign up and then running away if something turns out as dangerous as you should have known

[Sonny M]

I have a bunch of friends who are serving in the corp. and are over there right now. Before they left, we talked about the human shield thing. Every marine I talked to, said they would shoot at them. They consider them traitors. The other feeling was, there isn't going to be a real penalty. What military jury (if there was even a court martial, which is doubtfull) would ever convict them? You would never find 12 marines in the world, who would vote to convict a fellow marine for killing somone they think is a traitor. My guess is, if the air force sees those human shield "bulls eyes", they're going to hit them.

[Objective Reality]

I guess the prozac ran out too soon.

For anyone who hasn't seen it, I recommend Spalding Gray's "Monster In A Box" on film in the highest possible terms. It is an AMAZING monologue; I think it's his best.

At one point he describes how, in continual procrastination to avoid writing his novel, he took a job with HBO to go down to Nicaragua during the time of the Sandanista regime and film a documentary. Accompanying him were a number of human-shield types that the Nicaraguans routinely refered to as "SANDAL-istas," for the Birkenstock sandals they all wore. One of them was named "Leon." As Spalding put it, "something was WRONG with Leon."

Anyway, it seems the Communists arrange this town meeting in which the peasants come in and describe all the horrible things the Contras supposedly did to them. And it's boiling hot, and Spalding's drunk on warm beer and sick from rotten third-world pork, and these old women are detailing all of these horrible tortures, and all the Americans are falling asleep - EXCEPT for Leon, who sat at rapt attention, poured in sweat, throughout.

Afterwards, Leon confronts Spalding and FLIPS OUT: "WAS I JUST PUT ON TRIAL FOR BEING A COUNTER-REVOLUTIONARY?!?! OH, GOD!! THE CIA!!! THE CIA!!!" Etc. He goes BERSERK, almost to the point of being put into a Nicaraguan insane asylum. Spalding's tasked with staying with him and trying to keep him calm - a task at which he proves himself totally ineffectual: "I felt like HIS insanity was leaking into MINE!"

The story ultimately resolves with one of the Sandalistas, a psychiatric nurse by profession, taking Leon aside and asking him, "Leon: What were you taking in the United States, that you didn't bring with you here?"

Ladies and Gents, I present to you, The Human Shields.