BAGHDAD, Feb. 10 (UPI) -- A scenario familiar from the 1991 Gulf War is being repeated in Baghdad this week. While U.S. troops massed in the Gulf, peace activists were making what seems now to be a last-minute attempt to avert a war by acting as human shields around vital installations.
Some 41 U.S. activists calling themselves the Iraq Peace Team were already in Baghdad. At the same time, three double-decker London buses were expected later Monday bringing a few hundred Britons, Belgians, Germans and other Europeans who also plan to be "human shields" for Iraqi civilians in the event of an U.S. attack.
Elias Amidon, a 58-year-old member of Iraq Peace Team, said their action was "to show solidarity with the Iraqi people during an unjust time. We also want to report back to the American people and other countries about what's really going on here," Amidon, who is from Colorado, told United Press International.
"The U.S. media and administration are making as if the Iraqi people do not exist. The focus is only on (Iraqi President) Saddam Hussein, that he is evil and everywhere."
War, he said "will cause imaginable sufferings" to the Iraqi people who already suffer from the effects of the U.N.-imposed sanctions. These sanctions are a weapon of mass destruction. They are another war," he said. "This is mass destruction and the American people don't know that."
He said the Bush administration wants to attack Iraq "to make the region its gas station. They want power, control and resources. Whatever way they can have them, they will do," Amidon said. He also denounced the U.S.-led war on terrorism because "it is not making anyone of us safer."
Sister Virgine Lawinger, from Milwaukee, was equally unconvinced about the Bush administration's stated arguments for going to war against Iraq.
"I have found nothing that tells me that Iraq has threatened in any way the United States," Lawinger said. "I don't know if there are weapons or not, but I do know that not all nations that have weapons are being asked about them. And of course, the United States has shipped weapons to so many countries."
She said the protest group wanted the "Iraqi people (to) know that the American people stand with them and care very much about what is happening to them."
On Feb. 15, mass protests have been planned in various parts of the world to join the anti-war drive. But she thinks an American attack is now a virtual certainty.
"I believe that the only thing that could prevent war now is for the American people to rise up in great numbers and say, 'no,'" Lawinger said.
Amidon wanted to remain hopeful that such efforts will help "stop the march to war." He fears that war now could be a matter of days but said: "I cannot think that way."
Iraqis themselves are thankful for such efforts but have no expectations that they will help.
"The activists will not be able to delay or cancel the military strike. If the United States wants to hit Iraq, it will not be prevented from doing so by some human shields," said one Baghdad native who gave his name only as Hussein.
"They tried the human shields in 1991 but they were pulled out and left the country before the war started."
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(Ghassan al Kadi contributed to this report.)
