The military responded by taping a sign to a checkpoint in the Palestine hotel, saying, "No Voices of Wilderness NGOs." Says the group's Web site, "If the freedom to critique U.S. policies in Iraq regarding humanitarian issues is being curtailed already, then exactly what does this mean for building 'democracy' here?" (Attempts to reach military command in Kuwait for comment on the ejection were unsuccessful.)

Yet according to members of the Iraq Peace Team, it's not just the military who impede the truth from reaching Americans at home -- it's the American press. That's why they see their role partly as guerrilla journalists, disseminating their grounds-eye view of the war to an ever-expending network of e-mail contacts and alternative press outlets.

"Everybody's declaring it a victory now, and saying we did a good thing, but we violated international law, we enraged the whole world -- not just the Arab world," says Trish Schuh, a Manhattan woman who spent two months in Iraq with the Peace Team. "When I was over there at the media center, I got to talk to media people from all over the world. It's clear that the American media is regarded in the international community as a joke. I was shocked by how contemptuous other media professionals are about the American media."

Voices in the Wilderness' founder, Kathy Kelly, is equally contemptuous. In a scathing online diary entry posted Monday, she writes about Sattar, an Iraqi who has worked closely with the group for years and who volunteered at a Baghdad hospital during the war. "Some Western press came to the hospital and talked with Sattar," she wrote. "An interviewer pressed the idea that Iraqis should be grateful for liberation. Sattar attempted to explain how much suffering he'd seen, but the reporter insisted on a positive spin. Sattar said, 'Leave Now.'"

Indeed, Peace Team volunteers say the Iraqis have nothing to be grateful for. "The strongest impression left with me is that all of Baghdad, a city of 5 million people, is in shambles. It's a wasteland, reduced to ruin by the U.S. military," says Wade Hudson, a 58-year-old from San Francisco. "The impact on the civilian population of Baghdad is just horrific. Whenever you drop a million tons of bombs on a country, you're going to cause enormous death and destruction. It's mind boggling what we've done to that country. Driving through Baghdad on my way out of town on my last day, April 13, the whole town looked like Watts after the riots there."

While members of the Peace Team blame the American military for waging the war and bungling the peace, several say they established a melancholic rapport with individual soldiers. Shortly after the Marines arrived, Hudson says, he and some other activists brought them water and spoke to them about what they'd been through. The exchanges, he says, were far more poignant than hostile.

"It was heartrending to talk with these Marines," says Hudson. "They were so young they had barely begun shaving, and to reflect on the fact that their souls may be damaged for the rest of their lives ... they were very conflicted about what they were doing. One soldier told me he lost lots of sleep because he killed lots of innocent civilians when he made the wrong split-second decision. Another said he never fired his gun and told his fellow soldiers that his gun had jammed."

In the end, most Peace Team volunteers say such moments of improbable connection with both soldiers and Iraqis are their most important achievements in putting themselves on the front lines. "This is a type of citizen diplomacy, if you will," says Mark Frey, Christian Peacemaker Team's administrative coordinator. "While the leaders are trying to kill each other, the citizens are trying to be in right relationships with each other."

Peace team volunteers tell the story of one such relationship. Wilson-Hartgrove, his wife and Claiborne left Baghdad a week before the war ended. One member of the group they were traveling with, Cliff Kindy, was expelled from Iraq for straying too far into the city without a minder, so they couldn't wait for conditions to stabilize before heading west toward Amman, Jordan. With bombs falling on both sides of them, some as close as a quarter mile away, they dashed through the desert in a three-car caravan. Kindy's car, the last one, hit a piece of shrapnel in the road and flipped over. The five people inside were all injured.

Iraqis in an oncoming car saw them, stopped, helped the injured Americans into their car and took them to a doctor in a nearby town called Rutba. The doctor told them that three days before, their hospital had been bombed, but they'd set up a clinic. According to Wilson-Hartgrove, the doctor said, "We will take care of you because whether you are an Iraqi or an American, a Muslim or a Christian, we take care of everyone here."

Claiborne was in the car with Kindy, who he says had a deep gash in his head and had gone into shock. The doctor stitched him up without anesthetic. "He literally saved my friend's life," Claiborne says. Meanwhile, people from the town arrived at the clinic offering food and blankets.

As they were piling into the two remaining cars to make the dash to Jordan, they asked the doctor what they owed him. As Claiborne recalls it, the doctor said, "Nothing. The only thing we ask is that you tell the world that your government bombed our hospital."

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