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Marla Ruzicka

This gutsy 27yr old Californian had started the Campaign for Innocent Victims in Conflict (CIVIC) while working in Afghanistan in 2002. She entered Iraq immediately following the fall of Baghdad, and rapidly began organizing a survey of civilian casualties along with my friend Raed. This is still the most detailed attempt to gather specific data about specific victims, and whenever I have read out lists of the dead at protests, such as in Chicago in January, I have always used this data. But this was not data collection for its own sake. Marla held a belief which one who think uncontroversial, that innocent victims in conflict or their families should receive some kind of restitution. Any country that claims to be fighting a "just" war for "moral" reasons, as the US and allies did in the 2003 invasion, should as a matter of course care for those caught in the crossfire. However this is not the case and Marla had an uphill struggle to secure even the most basic assistance for the victims. The US doesn't do bodycounts, and the White House lawyers would never permit an official to talk about compensation for victims and risk opening up the way for liable suits. With the help of Senator Leahy, Marla managed to persuade Congress to set aside a tiny part of the $18.4bn Iraq appropriation as aid for victims rather than for US corporations. In addition Marla helped families to secure the salacia (blood money) payments from the US army, though there are capped at a paltry $2500. She was also involved in helping seriously injured children get treatment overseas and undoubtedly many other projects of which I'm unaware.
Read more here. http://www.commondreams.org/cgi-bin/print.cgi?file=/headlines03/1230-08.htm
Posted By Patches