Human shields with AK-47s held off looters from a water purification plant and served 1st home cooked meal to marines. The Wall Street Journal has an article on a meeting between human shields and Marines. Right wing talk show hosts have bashed the peace activists, but it seems they did far more than anyone sitting on their ass in a radio studio (it will be interesting to see if Savage says anything on this beyond suggesting they be charged with treason).

Michael M. Phillips writes:

Bob Dylan was on the boom box. The handwritten sign at the entrance said, "Bombing this site is a war crime." A vegetarian feast simmered on the stove. And the mouths of several Marines were watering as they prepared to enjoy their first home-cooked food in almost three months.

It was an unusual setting for a meal of reconciliation: the Sabanissan Water Treatment Project in north Baghdad. Seven human shields and six Iraqi engineers spent the conflict together at the water-purification plant. The first group was hoping to keep it from being bombed. The latter was hoping to keep water flowing to 3.5 million residents in the eastern half of the city.

Then on Saturday the First Division Marines of Lima Company (Third Battalion, Seventh Regiment) dropped by. About 150 strong, they were on a mission to search a suspected chemical laboratory nearby...

When the Marines arrived at the plant, they figured they would need to persuade somebody to get it working again, given that there was no running water where they were bivouacked at the Oil Ministry building to the southeast.

They quickly discovered that the plant had never stopped functioning. The determined team of Iraqi water engineers braved the American military machine's bombs and bullets to keep the water gushing through its giant filters. On a tour of the facility by the engineers, the Marine commander and four of his troops also found an equally determined team of human-shield protesters who stood against everything the Marines have done in this country.

"This is our country," Safaa Al Kinany, the plant's acting assistant director, told Lima Company's commander, Capt. George Schreffler, shortly after the Marines pulled up to the plant in armored-assault vehicles. "These are our people. This is our duty."

In normal times, as many as 20 technicians worked at the plant. But once the bombing of Baghdad began, most fled to the countryside, and just six usually showed up each day. Mr. Kinany, 44, and Hashim Hassan, 42, the plant's director, alternated nights sleeping on cots at the plant so the other could check on his family. Outside the office where Mr. Kinany sleeps, a sign in Arabic reads: "We are happy our nightmare has ended."

Though the pressure isn't terrific, water does reach some residents. The engineers haven't seen a paycheck since the war started. But they've seen a lot of the war. They watched U.S. Warthog antitank planes machine-gun vehicles. They saw Iraqi army troops and Fedayeen irregulars take cover in one of the pumping stations connected to the plant, firing rocket-propelled grenades at U.S. tanks crossing the Tigris River bridge. The Americans responded by attacking the pumping station, disabling it. Digging through the wreckage later, Mr. Kinany discovered a man's severed legs.

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