The Vet Strategy
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/10219754/site/newsweek/
The public is unhappy. The GOP is on the run. The Dems have a secret
weapon: Iraq war vets, deployed on a new field of battle.
By Richard Wolffe and Jonathan Darman
Newsweek
Dec. 5, 2005 issue - A few days after last year's presidential
election, Ladda (Tammy) Duckworth was piloting her helicopter north of
Baghdad when she saw a ball of fire at her knees. A rocket-propelled
grenade had struck her Black Hawk at its chin bubble, close to her
seat. When she awoke 10 days later, at Walter Reed Army Medical Center
in Washington, she found she had lost her legs, but none of her desire
to serve. For the next year, as she recovered from her devastating
injuries, she became one of the capital's favorite troops: an
inspirational war story amid the grinding violence of Iraq. She was a
senator's guest at the State of the Union and a witness before a
congressional hearing on health care for war casualties. As Veterans
Affairs Secretary Jim Nicholson put it, she was simply "a true American
hero."
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