What's clear about this war is that the post911 haze on America was actually understating opposition to the war, that as it gets clearer, the criticism and hard core opposition of broad swaths of America to this war is coming out in all sorts of ways.
I've said for a while that I doubt this war will happen, partly in hopes that Karl Rove is running the show at the White House. I think a war is almost guaranteed to kill Bush's reelection, since the blood on his hands for no justification will kill whatever likeable he has with a lot of people-- and that "good ol boy" likability is about all he has going as an asset right now. I heard him on the radio today complaining about the UN inspectors, and he sounds like a peeved obnoxious little boy. Really, really nasty and bad, as if he couldn't wait to go kill people. He is just losing it as he gets caught in the middle of American opinion, the UN and his own hawks.
-- Nathan newman
----- Original Message ----- From: "Liza Featherstone" <lfeather32 at erols.com> To: <lbo-talk at lists.panix.com> Sent: Tuesday, January 21, 2003 1:55 PM Subject: Volunteer "human shields" to head for Iraq
[This is incredibly commendable...these folks are really brave!]
----------
Volunteer "human shields" to head for Iraq
12 minutes ago
By Andrew Cawthorne
LONDON (Reuters) - A first wave of mainly Western volunteers will leave London at the weekend on a convoy bound for Iraq to act as "human shields" at key sites and populous areas in case of a U.S.-led war on Baghdad.
"The potential for white Western body parts flying around with the Iraqi ones should make them think again about this imperialist oil war," organiser Ken Nichols, a former U.S. marine in the 1991 Gulf War (news - web sites), told Reuters.
His "We the People" organisation will be sending off a first group of 50 human shields from the London mayor's City Hall building on Saturday, part of a series of departures organisers say will involve hundreds, possibly thousands, of volunteers.
Nichols' planned human shield convoys are one of several such efforts around the world to mobilise activists in Iraq as a deterrent against military strikes on Baghdad.
In Bucharest, more than 100 Romanian diehard communists said on Tuesday they would travel by bus to Iraq to act as human shields in case of a U.S. attack.
Members of the tiny Romanian Workers Party, which took the mantle of ousted dictator Nicolae Ceausescu's defunct Communist party in 1995, said they would set off next month to support "the cause of the people".
The new human shield plans revive memories of the 1991 Gulf War when President Saddam Hussein (news - web sites) forcibly held thousands of Western hostages after his invasion of Kuwait.
Many were put near sensitive sites in a bid to stop attacks that proved futile, although there are not thought to have been any casualties among the Western hostages.
Baghdad also used Iraqis, alongside some foreign volunteers, as shields in 1998 against U.S.-British bombing.
Nichols' groups intend to drive through Europe and the Middle East en route to Iraq. The first will travel in a pair of double-decker buses, led by a car with a white peace flag on it.
"We are on the verge of something big," said volunteer Christiaan Briggs, 26, from New Zealand. He argued that the stream of human shield volunteers was symptomatic of radicalising anti-war opinion around the world.
"People know this is wrong. It is just so blatantly transparent how the U.S. is trying to impose its hegemony."
PROPAGANDA ACCUSATIONS
"We the People" organisers said the self-financing human shield volunteers had come forward from a range of Western nations including the United States, Britain, Ireland, Switzerland, The Netherlands, New Zealand, Spain and Denmark.
There were also some volunteers from Muslim nation Turkey.
The major rallying point for Muslims, however, is in Iraq's neighbour Jordan. There, a campaign led by leftist parties and civic bodies is seeking 100,000 shield volunteers.
Baghdad has welcomed the plans, but volunteers smart at suggestions that they are handing a propaganda gift to Saddam.
Washington and London are sending troops to the Gulf and threatening military action against Saddam unless he admits to possessing weapons of mass destruction and disarms.
"It's laughable to say that we are working for Saddam when it was the UK and the U.S. who gave him his biological and other weapons in the first place," Nichols said.
"The hypocrisy is mind-blowing. The biggest threat to world security at this moment is (U.S. President) George W. Bush."
Nichols said his involvement in the human shield programme was in part "penance" for his participation in the Gulf War when a U.S.-led force drove Saddam's troops out of Kuwait.
But those forcibly used as human shields by Saddam in the past are stunned others are volunteering to do it.
"Putting yourself in danger is not going to help at all," said John Nicol, a British air force flyer shot down in 1991 and later paraded on Iraqi television. He was moved around by the Iraqis to various potential targets and experienced allied bombing nearby.
"I doubt it would be a deterrent to any attack," Nicol, a journalist and military analyst since leaving the air force, told Reuters. "I am shocked that anyone would want to put themselves in such a situation."
_______________________________________________ Rad-Green mailing list Rad-Green at lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/rad-green