You know, this is going to make a great National Lampoon movie. The script writes itself. Time to bring Chevy Chase out of retirement.

When we last left our intrepid, noble (albeit dimwitted) human shields, they were high tailing it out of Baghdad, having belatedly discovered that the Iraqis wanted them to shield actual targets, instead of hospitals and orphanages.

“We painted a huge sign on the roof saying human shields, so when any planes bombed the target, they’d see they were killing us — Englishmen and Finns and Turks.”

Yes, right next to the words “Baby Milk Factory.”

Some 50 other Swedish anti-war human shield activists who had traveled to Iraq began to leave on Monday, saying they had wanted to protect hospitals and schools but had been forced out to refineries, power plants and water works.

But now, the owner of the double-decker buses, having driven west from Baghdad, ran into a problem–the Mediterranean Sea. His buses aren’t amphibious, so he’s driven as far west as he can go, and is stuck in beautiful downtown Beirut, Lebanon, with no funds to ship the buses home.

“The buses have to be shipped back. It’s just not practical to drive them…I am not even really sure how much money I’ve got, but I’m sure it’s not enough,” said owner Joe Letts, adding that he would fly to London on Thursday to try to raise cash.

“I thought I would let people know it’s a problem,” he added, sitting in a makeshift kitchen on his bus in central Beirut.

No problem for us…

He didn’t seem to manage his money very well. But we’re not surprised about that, are we?

When he left London, he thought he had enough money to pay to ship the buses home, but ended up spending his personal finances to help pay for the trip.

But here’s his real problem:

“I own these buses and they are my livelihood and my family’s livelihood. And all along I was there really to take the people down and then come back,” he said.

…”I had promised my wife I would get the buses home,” he said. “If I don’t get them home, we’re absolutely stuck.”

All of a sudden that busless trip to London to raise money isn’t looking very fun. Wives and mothers of the ancient Spartan warriors admonished their men to come home “with their shield, or on it.” I guess for this modern (or postmodern?) warrior, it’s more like, “with your bus, or in it.”

Maybe he’s just better off setting up residence in Lebanon. Plenty of work for human shields there, from what I hear, especially in the south.