Remember the people who went off to Iraq so they could prevent selected targets from being bombed? Well where are they now that Saddam is not the target of American aggression but Iraqi civillians are the target of Sunni, Shi'ite and Insurgent aggression?

Could you please clarify? I'm reading this multiple ways, and I'm not sure exactly what you're meaning. Thanks.

People from around the world, perhaps most prevently a group from England who drove through Europe picking up others on their way to Iraq, chose to act as human shields on targets that America might attack when they went in to take out Saddam. To be fair these were civillian targets, their aim was to make any such bombing of targets impossible, or politically untenable, imagine the uproar of killing civillians to destroy a target. Well when the war was over most of the human shields went home, a few did choose to stay but were removed by Iraq. Well now the country needs help more than ever: where are the people who willingly risked their lives when Saddam was in power? I don't want to make it sound like they think that America is worse than Saddam or they don't care about the Iraqi lives lost now, I'm sure they do, but the question has to be asked.

I think a large part of that might have to do with how the nature of the conflict has changed. This is no longer an "us against the Iraqis" thing. It is us against some Iraqis, while other Iraqis fight amongst themselves, and other non-Iraqi are supporting some of these Iraqi, while others come to fight both groups. In other words there are a lot of conflicts going on simultaneously.

Because most suni/shi'ite insurgents would happily kill/kidnapp them in order to show their power/negotiate with the country they came from?
Just a guess......

people have been using the human shield for perhaps thousand's of years its nothing really new its been around in war for a long time well perhaps speaking from a merc's point of view most people hire these sort of people to do jobs that might contain killing or kidnapping others for money or other reason but its manly to prove to the person that did the hiring that you can carry out the job or it might be for negotiate but normally that is a very small part of it

Though working for people like that can be like driving a spike into your skull. Sure you get something new in there bur ultimatly you lose something as well.

Actually, I think the human shield idea started getting used when people got this strange idea that civilians was worth protecting during times of war. Since some societies believed that civilians should not be harmed, other societies manlipuate the first society by having the "human shields", in all shapes and forms.

I speculate that many of the Human Shields would have gone and joined NGOs to help out the Iraqi civilians live in Iraq, still maintaing their anti-war stance. Their anti-war stance actually got them out of a bind...many kidnappers kidnapped them only to get a firestorm of protests from all the anti-war protesters who was angry that one of their kind was kidnapped. Not to mention, the kidnappers are usually anti-war as well. So the protesters usually get freed after getting captured, with the kidnappers making apologies.

My guess on this matter is the change of the nature of the war. No longer is it an army against another one on an open field. They simply can't predict where the next suicide bombing takes place, as such, they have no use. And mur'phon said it best, it doesn't really matter to the insurgents if there's a human shield or not.