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was always amazed at how composed Marla remained amid the violence and confusion of Iraq. One of my favorite memories of her was when I was sitting in the middle of the Palestine Hotel lobby in Baghdad, surrounded by a confusing swirl of soldiers, officials, and reporters. Fear swept over me. What was I doing here? I had come as a freelancer, with no experience covering a war. Just as I was quietly freaking out, Marla appeared in the dusty, harried scene. She was the picture of calm in a perfect French braid and long blue dress. She was like...

Something I wrote about here a LONG time ago is now a "scoop" on Drudge: the taunting of wounded war vets (fresh from Iraq and Afghanistan) by anti-war protesters at Walter Reed hospital. Drudge writes as if Conservative News Service (CNS) was the first to discover this. Not true. Free Republic counter-protesters wrote about this long ago and posted photos. They've been there for over 2 years. Here's what I wrote, back in April: "Back on U.S. soil, Code Pink harasses badly wounded American soldiers, protesting them outside the Walter Reed medical facility in Washington, DC." What Drudge doesn't say--but,...

Leading Hollywood actresses are chasing the role of Marla Ruzicka, the young American aid worker who was killed in Baghdad in April by a suicide bomber, after Paramount secured the film rights to her life. Marla Ruzicka said she would like Drew Barrymore to play her because they had similarly chaotic lives The proposed story is creating a buzz in the US film industry. Paramount beat off bids from rival studios after the producer Marc Platt, whose previous credits include Philadelphia and Legally Blonde, impressed the Ruzicka family with his enthusiasm for the project.

The Girl Who Tried to Save the World The heroic life and final days of Marla Ruzicka, an American martyrBy JANET REITMAN On the afternoon of Saturday, April 16th, Marla Ruzicka sat in her unarmored Mercedes, talking on the phone with her friend Colin McMahon, a reporter in the Baghdad bureau of the Chicago Tribune. She'd had a "great" round of meetings in the Green Zone, she told McMahon, and was just leaving the fortified compound in the hopes of squeezing in one last meeting before the end of the day. The Green Zone, which sits on the west bank...

Who Killed Marla Ruzicka? By David Horowitz and Ben JohnsonFrontPageMagazine.com | May 3, 2005Marla Ruzicka, a 28-year-old political activist, was killed in Iraq on April 16 when a suicide bomber attacked a convoy of contractors on the airport road, blowing up the Mercedes she was in with her translator Faiz Al-Salaam. Ruzicka, whose ebullience earned her the nickname “Bubbles,” suffered burns over 90 percent of her body. Her last words, according to the medic who attended her, were, “I’m alive.”Her tragic death was a tribute to her bravery since she knew the risks and her fate was thus almost...

The D.C. Chapter of Free Republic invites all FReepers and lurkers in good standing to join us in our nation's capital this weekend as we play a three game series against the liberals and leftists working to undermine America from within.Friday, April 29, from 7:30 p.m. to 10 p.m. we will gather at the northeast corner of Georgia Avenue and Elder Street, NW to counter Code Pink's so-called antiwar demonstration at the gates of Walter Reed Army Medical Center.Saturday, April 30, from 4 p.m. to 8 p.m. we will gather at the southeast corner of Connecticut Avenue and T Street,...

BAGHDAD, Iraq - The 12-year-old orphan remembers Marla Ruzicka as a smiling blonde apparition who gave him a glass of juice and changed his clothes when bullet splinters in his spine made it painful to move and walking virtually impossible. The American activist took up Rakan Hassan's cause, securing a surgeon in the United States to perform the operation he needs to recover from the attack that killed his parents. But Ruzicka died before she could complete her mission, cut down by the same relentless violence that has shattered the lives of the many Iraqis she tried to help.

When The New York Times, “Nightline,” and CNN nominate a young blonde for sainthood ahead of the Pope, it’s time for a reality check. Especially when that blonde, Marla Ruzicka’s sole purpose is to legitimize our enemies, cause problems for U.S. troops already in harms way, and morally equivocate dead terrorists with victims of 9/11. Jane Fonda lite—but unfortunately without having been spat upon by right-thinking veterans. The recent death of Ruzicka, an American “activist” in Iraq, elicited an orgy of gush—everywhere from Time Magazine to The Guardian of London to Al-Jazeera. A 28-year-old San Franciscan, Ruzicka was in Iraq...

Treasonatrix Barbie: Meet the Real Marla Ruzicka April 21, 2005 By Debbie Schlussel When The New York Times, “Nightline,” and CNN nominate a young blonde for sainthood ahead of the Pope, it’s time for a reality check. Especially when that blonde, Marla Ruzicka’s sole purpose is to legitimize our enemies, cause problems for U.S. troops already in harms way, and morally equivocate dead terrorists with victims of 9/11. Jane Fonda lite—but unfortunately without having been spat upon by right-thinking veterans. The recent death of Ruzicka, an American “activist” in Iraq, elicited an orgy of gush—everywhere from Time Magazine to The...

KABUL -- Victims of the ongoing U.S. bombing campaign in Afghanistan gathered outside the U.S. Embassy in Kabul Wednesday to demand compensation for their losses. Among the victims were 21-year-old Aziz Ullah, whose left leg was sliced off by a piece of flying shrapnel, and 34-year-old Abdul Bashir, who lost "my beautiful daughter" when a bomb exploded near where she was playing in the street in October. Orfa Abdulahmad, meanwhile, tearfully told reporters how she had lost eight members of her family when her home was hit by a wayward bomb soon after the air raids began on October 7, ...

<p>For a free e-mail subscription to Best of the Web Today, click .</p> <p>"Flaws in U.S. Air War Left Hundreds of Civilians Dead," blares the lead headline of yesterday's New York Times. "The American air campaign in Afghanistan, based on a high-tech, out-of-harm's way strategy, has produced a pattern of mistakes that has killed hundreds of Afghan civilians," claims reporter Dexter Filkins.</p>

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...