Iraq Car Bomb Kills American Activist

Associated Press ^ | 4/17/05 | Associated Press

[jimbo123]

SAN FRANCISCO - A woman who founded a humanitarian group to aid civilian casualties in Iraq has died in a car bombing in Baghdad, 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, founded CIVIC in 2003 to "mitigate the impact of the conflict and its aftermath on the people of Iraq by ensuring that timely and effective life-saving assistance is provided to those in need," according to the group's Web site.

Ruzicka's parents said Sunday they were notified of her death just hours after the explosion. U.S. Embassy officials publicly released Ruzicka's name Sunday.

"We've been very worried about her but we know better than to tell our children not to do anything. We were supportive and just reminded her to be careful," said her mother, Nancy Ruzicka, of Lakeport.

She said her daughter had left her a telephone message the night before her death that said, "Mom and dad, I love you. I'm OK."

"She cared about people and gave people her love and help," Nancy Ruzicka said. "I'll remember the love she spread around the world and the good ambassador that she was for her country."

Ruzicka got her start working for non-governmental organizations 10 years ago at the San Francisco-based human rights group Global Exchange.

"It's a terrible tragedy and a tragic irony that somebody who devoted her life to helping the victims of war would herself become a victim of war," said Medea Benjamin, the group's director.

[maggief]

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/18/international/middleeast/18american.html

U.S. Aid Worker Dies in Her Line of Duty
By ROBERT F. WORTH

Published: April 18, 2005

BAGHDAD, Iraq, April 17 - In the locked-down world of Western journalists and government officials in Iraq, it was impossible not to notice Marla Ruzicka.

A 28-year-old Californian with blond hair and an electric smile, she ran a one-woman aid group. She distributed aid to orphaned Iraqi children and cajoled reporters to write about innocent civilians caught in cross-fires.

On Saturday afternoon, Ms. Ruzicka became a casualty herself. A suicide bomber attacked a convoy of security contractors that was passing near her car on the airport road in Baghdad, killing her and her Iraqi driver, United States Embassy officials in Baghdad said.

Ms. Ruzicka had worked in Afghanistan as well as Iraq. She took great risks, often traveling to talk to Iraqis without the guards and armored cars that reporters here tend to rely on. She also had an extraordinary gift for promoting her cause, whether in Iraq or Washington.

She worked with Senator Patrick J. Leahy, Democrat of Vermont, to get $2.5 million for civilian victims in Afghanistan, and later, $10 million for victims in Iraq. Last week another $10 million was authorized for the Iraq program.

"She was the one that persuaded us," Mr. Leahy said Sunday afternoon in a telephone interview. "Here's someone who at 28 years old did more than most people do in a lifetime."

Ms. Ruzicka was deceptively girlish in person. She often arranged gatherings for the foreign correspondents here and in Afghanistan. She was in her element at the gatherings, with her distinctive giggle always audible over the music. But she always used the occasions to lobby reporters to write about the things that mattered to her.

(um ... no comment snip)

[Bonaparte]

From John Leo --

August 2, 2002

Media critics now play 'gotcha' on the net

When The New York Times ran a front-page report on civilian casualties in Afghanistan ("Flaws in U.S. Air War Left Hundreds of Civilians Dead"), bloggers descended on the article like ants on a picnic.

Bloggers, Web loggers who run commentary and stray thoughts on their own Internet sites, like to play "gotcha" with the established media. A favorite target is the Times, which has developed the habit of running front-page editorials posing as news reports. Hundreds of civilians dead? Don't that many civilians perish in nearly every war? Stuart Buck at www.stuartbuck.blogspot.com asked: "Has there ever been another war in history where civilian casualties were so few that journalists could track down virtually all of them individually?"

On his site, The Politburo, blogger Michael Moynihan noted that the Times' source for the toll of 812 dead was Marla Ruzicka, identified as a field worker in Afghanistan for Global Exchange, "an American organization." What the Times didn't say, Moynihan wrote, is that Global Exchange is a "far-left" group that opposes globalization and the U.S. military. Ruzicka, he said, is a fan of Fidel Castro's Cuba and the winner of an award from "the Marxist group Refuse and Resist."

Oddly, after deciding to run a shaky article on civilian deaths, the Times seemed to take it all back, reporting that the "extraordinary accuracy of American air strikes" has produced few of the disasters seen in previous wars. If that's true, why run the article? The Times also featured a series of artistic photos of children wounded in the war, titled "A Legacy of Misery." This is the way the Times expresses its resistance to the war -- equating the liberation of Afghanistan with misery, pain and dead civilians.

The mighty Times may not have noticed that a lot of bloggers -- some with small reputations, some with no reputations at all -- now swarm over its news columns searching for errors and bias. The established media learned long ago how to marginalize critics and shrug off complaints of bias as the ravings of right-wing fanatics.

But the bloggers aren't so easily dismissed. They don't bluster. They deal in specifics and they work quickly, while the stories they target are fresh. They link to sources, to one another's sites, and to the articles under attack, so readers can judge for themselves. The blogging revolution, says commentator Andrew Sullivan, the best-known blogger, "undermines media tyrants."

On June 16, a startling front-page article in the Times reported that Alaska's mean temperature rose 7 degrees over the past 30 years. Sullivan checked with Alaska weather authorities and wrote that the Times figures were greatly exaggerated. The Times published a correction, stating that Alaska temperatures rose 5.4 degrees Fahrenheit, not 7, over the past 30 years. But the Alaska Climate Research Center said the correction was incorrect. The Times correction of 5.4 degrees was still double the real temperature increase.

Sullivan argued that the Times had "cherry-picked" data for maximum effect, measuring the 30 years between 1966, one of the century's four coldest years, and 1995, one of the hottest. A report from the Center for Global Change said Alaskan temperatures did not rise consistently over the 20th century -- the pattern was back and forth: warming until 1940, cooling until the 1960s, then warming again.

Sullivan was also one of the bloggers who attacked the anti-Bush polling story run by the Times on July 18 under the headline "Poll Finds Concerns That Bush Is Overly Influenced by Business." That story seemed like an attempt to turn a poll favorable to the president into a vague vote of no confidence. The story focused on a "surge" of Americans who think the country is on the wrong track.

But Sullivan noted that the poll found Bush's approval rating remaining very high at 70 percent, while 68 percent agreed that the president "cares about the needs and problems of people like yourself" and 80 percent said Bush shares their moral values. A similar poll ran the previous day in The Washington Post under the headline "Poll Shows Bush's Ratings Weathering Business Scandals." That's the straightforward way to report a poll.

Jack Shafer of Slate joined the Times-bashing bloggers, complaining about a July 1 story, "Bush Slashing Aid for EPA Cleanup at 33 Toxic Sites." That story misrepresented a partisan squabble over whether cleanups of "orphaned sites" (whose owners have gone bankrupt) should be financed by tax revenues or a revival of the Superfund tax, phased out in 1995. Shafer wrote that funding has remained steady in recent years and the Bushies want a modest increase for 2003, so the headline could have been, "Bush Superfund Budget Grows Slightly."

Keep an eye on bloggers. The main arena for media criticism is not going to be books, columns or panel discussions, and it certainly won't be journalism schools. It will be the Internet.

************************************************************************

This is why Ruzicka was in Iraq -- to gather fodder for anti-American propaganda. The do-gooder image is a cover.

[Shermy]

"It would appear that she died gathering statistics. At least she was actually doing data collection, rather than faking numbers for shock value. I'm sure her conclusions would have been interesting, given the wide discrepancy in counts of civilian injuries, but in the end likely jaundiced by her communism."

IIRC, her statistics about Afghani civilian deaths were declaimed - by the left. She put the figure very low, around 800. Academics reviewing Taliban news agency reports assured us it was much higher.

[Bonaparte]

"... rather than faking numbers for shock value."

See beginning of article in 164. She told the NYT just the lies they wanted to hear. Lying with grossly exaggerated figures is not a sign of "character" and there is no special virtue in being an "idealist." Every marxist that ever lived has been an "idealist," including Ruzicka.

[Bonaparte]

You forgot to put a barf alert on that NYT eulogy to their favorite marxist liar. Ooh, did the NYT forget to mention her nearly life-long affiliation with far-left, anti-American groups? Or her public suggestion that terrorists target conservatives? Probably just an oversight.

[Bonaparte]

"I'm sure that the Judge she meets will judge her with mercy."

Marxists and their ilk don't even believe in God -- in case you didn't know. And this traitor was no babe-in-the-woods. She fed the NYT inflated figures on civilian dead during the war in Afghanistan. Now, why do you suppose this admirer of communist dictators (her "heroes") would do that? Hmmm? And why do you suppose she called for terrorist targeting of American conservatives? Hmmmmmmmmmm???

[Selkie]

SAN FRANCISCO -- A Green Party candidate for U.S. Senate and two of her aides were arrested by San Francisco police Monday night at a Democratic rally as they clamored at the stage for a chance to speak.

Medea Benjamin; her campaign manager, Jane Brashares; and fund-raiser Marla Ruzicka were arrested for investigation of trespassing and resisting arrest at the Delancy Street Town Hall, which is private property, said police Lt. Louis Cassanego.

Cassanego said the women attempted to get onstage and yelled during speeches. They were released less than an hour later>>>> From left: Rita Lasar, Kelly Campbell, Eva Rupp, *Marla Ruzicka, *Medea Benjamin, Derrill Bodley, Jacquie Soohen.

Who Is Marla Ruzicka? (the source of the "Afghani civilian deaths" tale...Drudge headline)

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/720559/posts

[Selkie]

he fact that she was an American civilian probably had a lot to do with her being targeted, philz.

Prayers up for her and her family.

Jack.>>>>

Prayers for America hating family ?
I think not.

[Selkie]

Marla Ruzicka, 23, an officially accredited observer from the Green Party, commented on the tactics of the Bush supporters. She described them as "really nasty. There was one guy with a bald head, like a skinhead. They surrounded me and called me a baby killer, because of my support for the right to abortion. When I pointed out Bush's presiding over the death penalty, they said: no, no, that's justice. They're scary. Maybe they're the ones who should be on the terrorist lists.">>>>


Im glad she bought the farm.

[Archie Bunker on steroids]

Thanks, I ran across another good site too.

[Selkie]

No sorry I don't shed tears over Pro Abortion murder, America hating, President Bush hating, Communist little twits.

[Enterprise]

Ok - I went to google image search and concentrated only on "Archie Bunker."