[Vision2020] Legless Vet Regroups, Campaigns for House

[Tom Hansen]

>From today's (February 19, 2006) Spokesman Review -

"Duckworth, who considers the Iraq war a mistake, is among about a dozen
veterans who served in Iraq or Afghanistan running for federal office this
year, at last count all but one of them Democrats."

Perhaps, after all is said and done, the American people will realize that
commitment to our troops does not end when they are discharged.

----------------------------------------------------------------

Peter Slevin 
Washington Post
February 19, 2006

CHICAGO - The smiling candidate in rimless eyeglasses and a long woolen
skirt maneuvers carefully among tables and chairs as she works a crowded
Starbucks. She is taking small steps, and the reason for the slight
awkwardness in her gait is not instantly clear.

Reaching to shake hands with a voter, she says: "You may have heard of me.
I'm the Iraq war vet who's running. I was injured over there." Talking with
another, she says: "I actually lost both my legs. I can walk because I got
really good health care."

Tammy Duckworth, Democratic candidate for Congress, cannot escape the
catastrophic wounds she suffered as an Army helicopter pilot in Iraq. And,
for the purposes of her candidacy, she does not want to. For better or
worse, her injuries are her signature, her motivator and, she hopes, her
ticket into the consciousness of voters in the Illinois 6th District.

"I can't avoid the interest in the fact that I'm an injured female soldier,"
Duckworth, 37, says in an interview at her campaign headquarters in Lombard,
west of Chicago. "Understand that I'm going to use this as a platform."

Duckworth, who considers the Iraq war a mistake, is among about a dozen
veterans who served in Iraq or Afghanistan running for federal office this
year, at last count all but one of them Democrats. The party leadership is
calculating that candidates who wore the uniform can offer a credible
counterpoint on national security to Republicans who have dominated the
debate from the campaign trail to Capitol Hill.

 
That's fine with Duckworth. She sees the race - and pretty much everything
else since Nov. 12, 2004, when an insurgent's rocket-propelled grenade
exploded at her feet - as a second chance. "I know this sounds really corny,
but I've just got to be more," Duckworth says. "I've got to be more than I
was."

At the same time, Duckworth constantly wrestles with the reality of what she
no longer is, the moves she can no longer make.

A self-described girlie girl whose favorite color is pink, she watches
"America's Next Top Model" and laments not being able to wear feminine
shoes. She has ordered special prosthetic "runway feet" that will allow for
a 2-inch heel.

Then there is the matter of her missing lap. One leg is only 2 1/2 inches
long.

"I can't actually hold a soda between my knees in the car," she says. "It's
really hard to use a laptop when you only have half a lap."

Duckworth still wears pink. She has a baseball jersey that reads, "Dude,
where's my leg?"

Signing up

The daughter of a retired Marine, Duckworth was born in Bangkok, where her
father, Franklin Duckworth, did U.N. refugee work and married Lamai
Sompornpairin, an ethnic Chinese. She spent much of her youth in Southeast
Asia. She joined the ROTC while earning a master's degree in international
affairs at George Washington University.

Moving to Illinois to pursue a doctorate, she signed up with the Illinois
Army National Guard, asking to train as a Black Hawk pilot. This was partly
because she hoped to taste combat, partly because she wanted to show she
could match the men.

In her civilian life, she was a manager for Rotary International. As an Army
captain, she rose to command 42 soldiers. She was about to transfer when the
unit was called to duty in Iraq. She persuaded her superiors to reverse the
move, saying, "There was no way I was going to let them go without me."

Of being a pilot, Duckworth says: "I love controlling this giant, fierce
machine. I strap that bird on my back and I'm in charge of it and we just
go, and it's just power and this machine and how smoothly the crew works
together."

On Nov. 12, 2004, after a stop in Baghdad's secure Green Zone for chocolate
milkshakes, stir-fry and Christmas ornaments, Duckworth was right where she
wanted to be, flying above the treetops at 130 mph.

Chief Warrant Officer Dan Milberg was at the controls when the RPG hit. He
landed the chopper and mistook Duckworth for dead, she said, but helped haul
her body, slippery with blood, to a second Black Hawk. Eight days later, she
awoke from unconsciousness at Walter Reed Army Medical Center.

For days, husband Bryan Bowlsbey had been at her bedside, repeating over and
over: "You were injured. You are at Walter Reed. You are safe."

Unaware she was missing most of both legs, she asked why her feet hurt.

Recovering

One person who had been to war, and had suffered for it, helped her see the
future. He was Robert Dole, former Senate majority leader and wounded World
War II vet, who often visited Walter Reed without fanfare.

After a long conversation with him in early 2005, Duckworth understood that
she had more to accomplish. She thought about the public service of veterans
such as Dole, John F. Kennedy and Sen. Daniel Inouye, D-Hawaii, and their
Vietnam War-era brethren, Sens. John McCain, R-Ariz., and John Kerry,
D-Mass.

Her public career began shortly after Sen. Richard Durbin, D-Ill., invited
wounded Illinois vets to attend last year's State of the Union address.
Duckworth, promoted to major, soon was calling Durbin's office to get help
for military families, which led to congressional testimony on military
health care.

In March, Duckworth took her first steps on her first set of artificial
legs. It took her two minutes to walk 12 feet. She felt exhausted, and
elated.

It was summer when Durbin asked her to consider a fresh career. She realized
the target was the Illinois 6th, whose boundary lay three miles from the
home that friends and strangers remodeled to accommodate her.

She asked herself, "Did I want to do this to my private life?" Still weak,
still learning to walk, still trying to strengthen a badly damaged arm that
she almost lost, Duckworth chewed it over for two months with her husband.

Running

With a boost from her new political friends, Duckworth formally announced
her candidacy on Dec. 18 on ABC's "This Week with George Stephanopoulos." 

In just two weeks, she raised $120,000.Campaigning now under the tutelage of
some of the most experienced Democratic strategists in Illinois, Duckworth
stresses bread-and-butter issues. She speaks of the expanding reach of the
alternative minimum tax and the rising cost of health care. She points out
that she still has $70,000 in student loans and has fought through a health
crisis.

Duckworth casts abortion and end-of-life decisions as private matters that
should lie beyond the federal government's reach. If she wins the March 21
primary, she will face state Sen. Peter Roskam, a well-financed conservative
Republican in a historically Republican district.

Whatever happens, she is confident she will be fine. "What the past year has
done," she says, "is give me a fearlessness."

Duckworth is the first to say her campaign is about more than Iraq, but it
is her opinions on the war that some questioners most want to hear. She
tells them she supports the troops and believes the United States must
persevere long enough to give Iraqis a chance.

But she believes the decision to invade was an error, and a badly executed
error at that. "I think it was a bad decision. I think we used bad
intelligence. I think our priority should have been Afghanistan and
capturing Osama bin Laden," Duckworth says.

Duckworth has a recurring dream, often after watching news coverage of the
war. She is back in Iraq, at the controls of her Black Hawk or doing desk
duty in Balad. She has her legs. It took eight months for her dream
personality to accept that the good health would evaporate at daybreak, but
now she finds the sensation gratifying.

"In my dream, I usually know: 'Oh, I have legs. Cool. I'm going to run
around.' "

That's how Duckworth feels about her second chance.

----------------------------------------------------------------

Pro patria,

Tom "and the voices" Hansen
Moscow, Idaho

"Patriotism is not a short and frenzied outburst of emotion but the tranquil
and steady dedication of a lifetime." 

--Adlai E. Stevenson, Jr.