If I Can't See It, It Doesn't Exist - this is sad: a "human shield" recants. I was a naive fool to be a human shield for Saddam. What's sad is not that the person recanted. It's his means of determining truth. Here's a well-educated rich Westerner, with unparalleled access to information of all kinds.

I am a 23-year-old Jewish-American photographer living in Islington, north London. I had travelled in the Middle East before: as a student, I went to the Palestinian West Bank during the intifada. I also went to Afghanistan as a photographer for Newsweek.

Yet he has to actually experience a police state to hear for himself that it is bad to its subjects.

I was shocked when I first met a pro-war Iraqi in Baghdad - a taxi driver taking me back to my hotel late at night. I explained that I was American and said, as we shields always did, "Bush bad, war bad, Iraq good". He looked at me with an expression of incredulity.

As he realised I was serious, he slowed down and started to speak in broken English about the evils of Saddam's regime. Until then I had only heard the President spoken of with respect, but now this guy was telling me how all of Iraq's oil money went into Saddam's pocket and that if you opposed him politically he would kill your whole family.

It scared the hell out of me. First I was thinking that maybe it was the secret police trying to trick me but later I got the impression that he wanted me to help him escape. I felt so bad. I told him: "Listen, I am just a schmuck from the United States, I am not with the UN, I'm not with the CIA - I just can't help you."

Of course I had read reports that Iraqis hated Saddam Hussein, but this was the real thing. Someone had explained it to me face to face.

So. Is this the state of education today, that people have literally no idea what to think about the world except their own particular experience? I hope not.

I opposed the war too, but I have no illusions that Iraq is a nice regime. The war will undoubtedly benefit most Iraqis, at least in the short run and probably the long run. That's not exactly saying much, starting as they do so close to zero.