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 Guardian of London to Al-Jazeera.

A 28-year-old San Franciscan, Ruzicka was in Iraq “to help the Iraqi people,” proclaim the multi-orgasmic mainstream media memorials to her.  Even the Wall Street Journal’s normally excellent Robert Pollock mourned “Ambassador Marla” for being a less gnarly America-hater than the others.

Et tu, Robert?

With her cascading blonde hair and youthful looks, Ruzicka didn’t look like your average greasy-haired, pot-smoking, hackey-sack-playing, crunchy radical.  And the media swooned over her, the newly-anointed Vanity Fair pin-up in Birkenstocks.

But looks are deceiving.  Marla Ruzicka was nothing more than a traitor cross-dressing as a peace activist.

She formed the Campaign for Innocent Victims in Conflict (CIVIC), the goal of which was anything but CIVIC during the War on Terror or ever.  Ruzicka’s aim was to force the U.S. government to get an “accurate” count of “innocent civilian” deaths by U.S. troops and blackmail America into paying monetary settlements for each death.

But many of those dead included assorted terrorists, jihadists, and other collaborators and uprisers against Americans.  Ruzicka had the gall to insist that these Afghani and Iraqi dead, terrorists or not, get recognition and sympathy equal to victims of the 9/11 attacks.

More outrageous, Ruzicka got taxpayer money to fund her aiding-and-abetting pursuits.  Where was Marla Ruzicka on 9/11?  Hint:  Not asking Al-Qaeda for money to count and compensate U.S. victims of terror.

Ruzicka began as a professional protester for left-wing groups in her native San Francisco.  First, she was active with the anti-capitalist, anti-business Rainforest Action Network activist.  Then, she was an AIDS activist, interrupting an AIDS-related speech by Colin Powell.  As an anti-Bush protester, she wore a sarong with a protest-statement visible after she ripped it off her body in front of the then-Texas Governor.

Eventually, Ruzicka joined far-left Human Rights Watch and Global Exchange, falling  down another rung in bad fashion taste and dumping the sarong for a hijab, as she traveled first to Afghanistan and then to Iraq.  She didn’t wear the hijab out of any new-found sense of Pan-Arabia modesty, but rather to be down with her new Islamist homies.

Ruzicka went to Iraq as an activist for Code Pink, which is more aptly titled “Code Pinko” by FrontPageMag.com writer Jean Pearce.  Code Pink is an assortment of neo-Commie America-haters who love Fidel Castro (and Cuba under him) and Marxist Sandinista thugs (thankfully, long ago deposed) and have ties to environmental terrorist groups (Animal Liberation Front and Environmental Liberation Front).

That’s bad enough.

But in Iraq, where Ruzicka traveled with the group, Code Pink functioned as a Pro-Saddam—and now pro-Insurgent—group of traitorous Americans.  Code Pink was in Iraq in October 2002, months before U.S. troops went in to the country, the following March.  The darlings of Al-Jazeera (and our own media, unfortunately) Code Pinkos acted as human shields and anti-American protesters in the Iraqi streets, much to Saddam Hussein’s delight.

But it gets worse.

Remember the Americans burnt to a crisp and hung from a bridge in the Fallujah uprising?  Code Pink donated over $650,000 to those Fallujah terrorists (Code Pinkos call them “refugees.”)

Back on U.S. soil, Code Pink harasses badly wounded American soldiers, protesting them outside the Walter Reed medical facility in Washington, DC.  Code Pinkos disrupted last week’s Congressional confirmation hearings on UN Ambassador nominee John Bolton, shouting and unfurling banners against him.  They are also shadowing military recruiters to foil recruiting efforts.  The upside: there won’t be enough soldiers to protect Code Pinkos’ rights and freedoms.

This is Marla Ruzicka’s beloved Code Pink.  It’s time to stop worshipping at the alter of this false heroine.

There are plenty of young American men and women Ruzicka’s age and younger who’ve been brutalized or killed in Iraq and Afghanistan.  But none of them got the wall-to-wall fawning coverage that Ruzicka got—unless they were anally raped or formerly played pro football.

That should tell you something about the media’s outlook on whose life is more worthy and whose death is more important:  American soldiers fighting for freedom—bad;  vociferous activist bimbette hampering those American soldiers and helping their terrorist killers—very, very good.

While it’s a sad day when any American gets killed by Islamic terrorists, it’s measurably less sad when that American aided and abetted them—and belittled our troops.

For Marla Ruzicka, a/k/a Treasonatrix Barbie, some might call it, poetic justice.