To follow up on the excellent column "Without protesters, there wouldn't be a war" (March 25) I recently read a revealing opinion piece in the Sunday edition of London's Daily Telegraph. The title of the column was "I was a naïve fool to be a human shield for Saddam." The author, Daniel Pepper, wrote how he thought he was doing a good deed by traveling to Baghdad on Jan. 25 to "[bring] the anti-war movement to the forefront of world attention."

But after five weeks of attempting to avert the United States' efforts to oust Saddam Hussein from power, rid Iraq of weapons of mass destruction and liberate the Iraqi people, Pepper found out from his taxi driver in Baghdad that, "All Iraqi people want this war." Pepper's taxi driver reiterated to him that, "We want America to bomb Saddam." What shocked Pepper the most was that his taxi driver honestly believed that Saddam actually paid the human shields to come to Iraq and protest the war. Pepper said that he vehemently denied
that accusation, but the taxi driver
was not convinced. "Really," he asked, "How much did Saddam pay you to come?"

For those that continue to protest this war, I ask you to put aside your hatred of Bush and support him and our troops, because if it wasn't for the leadership of our president, the Iraqi people wouldn't be on the brink of freedom.