The senseless death of the woman who fought George Bush

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http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/story.jsp?story=630851

She looked like she should be surfing on a beach in California but Marla Ruzicka was drawn instead to Iraq and her self-appointed task of helping the civilian victims of George Bush's war. She was 28 years old and had been a peace activist since a young age. She went to Baghdad as the head of her own charity, determined to find out how many Iraqis had been killed or injured by US forces and get compensation for survivors.

At the weekend, the dedication that had taken Marla from her home in San Francisco to the war zones in Afghanistan and Iraq, led to her death.

On Saturday afternoon, as she and her driver were on the road leading from Baghdad to the city's airport, a suicide bomber attacked a passing convoy of security contractors. Marla's car was caught in the blast and engulfed in flames. A US Army medic who tried to help her said she was briefly conscious and was able to speak. "I'm alive," she had told him. She died along with an unnamed French national and an Iraqi.

The question everyone always asked about Marla was from where did she get all of her energy. She was constantly on the move: chattering, smiling, rushing to a hospital, dashing to a meeting, cajoling journalists, pestering diplomats, taking notes from a woman whose relatives had been killed, crossing time zones, entering people's lives.

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