US Features
Iraq veteran who lost both legs seeks congress votes
By Gabriele Chwallek
Nov 6, 2006, 19:00 GMT

Washington- Tammy Duckworth stands with her feet firmly on the ground - albeit on the end of artificial legs.

Her listeners are often greeted with: 'Hi. I'm a veteran from the Iraq war. I am the woman without legs.'

Not that the people in 6th Illinois congressional district near Chicago need telling. All know her story - and it has spread far beyond.

Duckworth, a Democrat candidate maimed nearly two years ago by a rocket-propelled grenade, is one of the best-known candidates in Tuesday's Congressional elections.

The outcome of her race for a Congressional seat against her rival Republican state senator Peter Roskam could help decide which of the two parties controls the House of Representatives.

The two candidates are in a neck-and-neck race - which says much for the popularity of the 38-year-old former army major and helicopter pilot. Duckworth is seeking the seat held for 32 years by Republican stalwart Henry Hyde, who is retiring from Congress.

Nearly a dozen veterans from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are running in this congressional election. All but one are Democrat candidates.

The party leadership encouraged their candidacies in order to show publically that there is nothing unpatriotic about criticizing the war in Iraq.

Duckworth considers the war a mistake, but she is also proud of having served her country. 'It was my duty to go, and I'd go again tomorrow,' the Washington Post quoted her as saying.

Ironically, her inspiration to switch to politics came from Republican Bob Dole, who was wounded in World War II and later became the senate majority leader.

Dole visited Duckworth several times in the Walter Reed hospital near Washington where she spent weeks after losing her legs.

Their conversations proved intense and shortly afterwards, Duckworth realized to what end she wanted to devote her 'second chance at life.'

On that ominous November 12, 2004, her life hung by a slender thread as the Black Hawk helicopter which she was co-piloting was hit by an insurgents' rocket-propelled grenade near Baghdad.

Eight days later, Duckworth woke up in hospital to find that she no longer had legs, and had to be thankful that doctors were able to save an arm which had been partially torn to shreds.

Duckworth now has artificial limbs which allow her to wear the high-heeled shoes for which she has always had a predilection - just as she has for the colour pink.

In interviews, she describes herself as a 'girlie girl' and smiles vivaciously, which together with her humour has become her signature.

She jokes about her plight. 'My feet never go cold,' she says, and sometimes sports a shirt proclaiming: 'Dude, where's my leg?'

But as her disability becomes a vote-catcher, Duckworth says she tries to divert attention quickly to issues which she says are of special importance to her, such as education and health care.

Regardless of how the election unfolds on Tuesday, Duckworth's world will not cave in. As she told the Chicago Tribune, after 12 November 2004 'nothing else could put fear in me.'