[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 151 (2005), Part 5]
[Senate]
[Page 6723]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                             MARLA RUZICKA

  Mr. LEAHY. Mr. President, this is a matter which I and my friend from 
California, Senator Boxer, will be speaking about later this afternoon, 
and that is the tragic death of a remarkable young Californian, Marla 
Ruzicka.
  Marla was the founder of a humanitarian organization devoted to 
helping the families of Afghan and Iraqi civilians who have been killed 
or suffered other losses as a result of U.S. military operations. She 
died in Baghdad on Saturday from a car bomb while she was doing the 
work she loved and for which so many people around the world admired 
her.
  In fact, Tim Rieser, in my office, has worked closely with her. We 
received e-mails about the work she was doing, and even photographs of 
people she was helping arrived literally minutes before she died.
  I will speak later today about this. But she was a remarkable person. 
When I spoke with her family in California yesterday, I told them this 
was a life well worth living, that most people would not accomplish in 
their lifetime what this 28-year-old wonderful woman accomplished in 
hers.

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