5th March 2003, 10:06 PM
Quote: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 of the $5,500 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 traveled 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 traveled 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."
Quote: BAGHDAD - A movement intended to encourage Western anti-war activists to travel to Iraq and discourage a U.S.-led war has apparently fizzled.
Just a few weeks ago, dozens of activists arrived in Baghdad, declaring themselves "human shields" and vowing hundreds of others would join them in putting their lives on the line.
But few are still there.
They came to stand by civilian locations to make sure hospitals and water works didn't become military targets in a bombing campaign.
But some complained Iraqi officials tried to make them take up positions near military sites.
They also squabbled amongst themselves, and many ran out of money. Some left when a massive movement of anti-war protesters failed to materialize in Iraq.
Many insist their efforts weren't wasted, that they influenced public opinion about the possibility of war.
Those silly liberals
I'll bet you wanted to join them, didn't you, ABF?Apparently, in their idiotic zeal to apolgize for Saddam Hussein and Iraq, they forgot to take into account that Saddam doesn't give a damn about the Iraqi people. So instead of being human shields to protect the "innocent" citizens of Iraq, the regime wanted them to camp out at oil fields, power plants and other military infrastructure so that we wouldn't bomb it.
Personally, I wouldn't shed a tear if they had been bombed. But it looks like God has mercy on idiots.
