These people are simply idiotic. There's no other way to say it.

A first wave of mainly Western volunteers will leave London this 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," organizer Ken Nichols, a former U.S. marine in the 1991 Gulf War, told Reuters.

I wonder if they'll place themselves, or if they'll ask the Iraqi regime for tips on the best place to camp out (Hint: How about staking your oversized umbrella right next to an Iraqi anti-aircraft defense facility?...I hear they're lovely this time of year).

Baghdad has welcomed the plans, but volunteers smart at suggestions that they are handing a propaganda gift to Saddam.

and...

"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.

Well, you're squatting in the middle of Baghdad to try to avert an attack on a tyrannical regime. I'm not sure what version of the dictionary they're using, but that certainly seems like "help" to me.

Here's another viewpoint:

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.

Allied forces were forcibly used as human shields, and now these morons want to volunteer for the privelege. It's like a nightmare version of MTV's Jackass.

But who's to stop them. If they want to sit under the shadow of a falling bomb, so be it. I just wonder if they'll make it into next year's Darwin Awards.