A humanitarian activist in Iraq was killed today when a car bomb exploded near her:
A woman who led an effort to help those ravaged by violence in Iraq fell victim to the war herself when a car bomb killed her and two other people, officials said Sunday.
Marla Ruzicka, founder of Campaign for Innocent Victims in Conflict, died Saturday in the blast, which also killed an Iraqi and another foreigner, officials said. She had been in Iraq conducting door-to-door surveys trying to determine the number of civilian casualties in the country.
Ruzicka, 28, of Lakeport, founded CIVIC in 2003 and was instrumental in securing millions of dollars in aid money from the federal government for distribution in Iraq.
It goes on to detail how she was in Iraq initially with the idiots from Code Pink, but decided to stay when the other idiots left and started that program called CIVIC.
“I decided not to take a position on the war but to try to do the right humanitarian thing,” the 26-year-old said during a recent trip to San Francisco, before Saddam Hussein was captured. “No one can heal the wounds that have been inflicted; you just have to recognize that people have been harmed.”
According to CIVIC, which enlisted volunteers to fan out across Iraq to survey the impacts of the war, approximately 2,082 Iraqi civilians are dead, 4, 083 are wounded, and 1,657 structures (homes or businesses) had been damaged or destroyed at the time of her visit.
When I heard she was involved with Code Pink my initial reaction was not a good one, but it seem’s she may have started to think a littler clearer while doing this work in Iraq:
Hearing this, Ruzicka laughed. “It’s true – just two years ago I was dragged out of the World Affairs Council when President Bush was speaking. It was his first trip to California, and I’d bought a ticket to hear him speak. I made my sarong-type skirt into a banner, and when he started his address, I unfurled it and jumped on a table and started shouting, ‘Stop the rate caps now!’ The cops grabbed me and took me out.
“These days, I’d rather have a meeting with President Bush than yell at him.”
This has meant cozying up to a military she had formerly excoriated. “I’m constantly hitting them up for help, and I have learned that for the most part, they are anxious to help,” she said. “The Marines have nicknamed me Cluster Bomb Girl because I would hear of places where they had gone off, and I would ask them to help me clear the area.”
Reading through her organizations site it appears that it’s quite anti-war and anti-American, you know…our soldiers are the bad guys. It’s sad she died but she knew the dangers. Yes, she was brave to go over there but the really brave one’s are those who serve our country, and do not fight against it.
Be that it may….RIP Marla Ruzicka.
UPDATE – 4/19/05 1030HRS
Mick over at Uncorrelated has a bit about Marla and her kind that I just had to steal:
While Marla was someone’s daughter and someone’s friend, her death illustrates the fundamental kookiness of the left-wing anti-war agenda. In her world-view, she was killed by the “good guys” while working against the “bad guys”
Jay Tea over at Wizbang has another one:
The problem is, people are grotesquely overcomplicating the situation. The “insurgents” aren’t “freedom fighters.” They aren’t interested in “driving out the foreign oppressors.” They aren’t “standing up to the invaders.”
They’re killers. That’s their main motive. They kill because they want to, need to, enjoy it. They kill our forces because once they drive us out, they can freely kill Iraqis. They kill those who help us because it’s becoming more and more expensive to try to kill us. And if they succeed, they’ll start in on killing those who sided with us, those who oppose them, those that don’t adequately support them, those that might oppose them one day. They killed Marla Ruzicka because they could, even though she was one of their best friends. They kill because that’s what they do. They did it under Saddam, and they want those days back.
And these are the people that Michael Moore call equivalent to our Founding Fathers.
Also, I find out a bit more of her history (via Bluto over at The Dread Pundit Bluto) that show’s she may never have really starting “thinking a little clearer” as I stated earlier:
From MSNBC
Marla Ruzicka died Saturday in a car bombing in Iraq, where she had been on and off since the March 2003 invasion began, conducting door-to-door surveys to determine the number of civilian casualties, friends and family said.
But Ruzicka had been a radical activist for much longer than that, receiving a “Courageous Resister” award in 1996 from “Refuse and Resist”,
Jody Avirgan, Sarah Park, Marla Ruzicka and nearly fifty other high school students who traveled to Cuba in defiance of the US travel ban as part of a group organized by Global Exchange.
Ruzicka was quick to blame the US for civilian casualties, and gloss over the effects of terrorism.
“The last two years from Kabul to Baghdad, my time has been made up of rich experiences and intimate experiences with families harmed as a result of US military actions.”
From “Marla’s Journal”
I will be spending Thanksgiving in Iraq, observing the end of Eid in Baghdad with children like Ayat. Ayat’s parents, Mohammad Kadhum Manssor and Hamdia Radhi Kadhum, were both killed in an accident involving a U.S. tank.
But important facts could be omitted at times. From Envirosagainst the war:
On the 24th of October, former teacher Mohammad Kadhum Mansoor, 59, and his wife, Hamdia Radhi Kadhum, 45, were traveling with their three daughters ? Beraa, 21, Fatima, 8, and Ayat, 5 years old ? when they were tragically run over by an American tank.
A small grenade was thrown at the tank, causing it to loose [sic] control and veer onto the highway, over the family’s small Volkswagen.
The most telling and ominous quote of all is this: one
“The last week I was warned not to go there because the pool is surrounded by glass windows- quite easy for a car bomb to go off on the main road outside. But I could not resist. I have been going everyday.”
Take enough risks and, eventually, the universe makes you pay.
Jawa has a interesting take:
Apparently Marla Ruzicka was more than just a peace activist. Her mission, it seems, was to document the victim’s of U.S. aggression. No documentation of those killed by terrorists, like herself.
But my favorite so far as usual has to be from the Emperor from The Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler:
She might have considered surveying the civilian casualties before Sod’em Insane and his lovable offspring were put out of action, but that clearly wouldn’t have fit her agenda.
Guess what? The number of civilian casualties just went up by one.
Maybe it wouldn’t have happened if her sponsor, George Soros, had put aside some of the funds allocated to her organization towards buying body armor.
I am not happy she died and feel for her parents, just wish it could of been Sean Penn or Michael Moore who got blown up, now that I would be happy about.
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