LAMB TO THE SLAUGHTER:

Young Activist's Life Cut Short in Iraq Blast (Doug Smith, April 18, 2005, LA Times)

She hugged and laughed her way through war zones with an effervescence belying her seriousness of purpose.

No pass to get through a checkpoint? She leaned across her Iraqi driver to show the stern American guard the shock of blond hair beneath her flowing black robes.

"Please, please, please, please, please," she said, and then, "Where are you from?"

She waved aside tough-looking guards from all corners of the world, never looking back to see if they had raised an AK-47 in her direction. In her one-woman mission to make the United States take responsibility for the innocent victims of its wars, 28-year-old Marla Ruzicka bubbled with a passion that seemed to lift her beyond danger.

Iraq's random violence caught up with Ruzicka on Saturday. Her car pulled alongside a convoy of U.S. contractors just as a suicide bomber detonated his car. Ruzicka, her driver-translator and one guard on the convoy were killed. Five other people were wounded.

Her death stunned a wide circle of diplomats, government officials, soldiers, journalists and ordinary people from Baghdad to Kabul.

"God bless her pure soul, she was trying to help us," said Haj Natheer Bashir, the brother-in-law of an Iraqi teenager Ruzicka was trying to evacuate to the Bay Area for surgery. "She was just a kind lady."

Tough way to find out who the real enemies of the innocent are.

Posted by Orrin Judd at April 18, 2005 8:34 AM