The woman speaking at this year's Labor Day Barbecue in the Village of Lombard, Illinois is Tammy Duckworth.
Tammy was born in Thailand and grew up in several countries in Southeast Asia where her father, Franklin Duckworth, worked for the United Nations and international companies. Tammy's mother, Lamai, was a native of Thailand. At 16 Tammy and her family moved to Hawaii where she finished high school and received her bachelor's degree in political science from the University of Hawaii and her master's degree in International Affairs from The George Washington University in Washington, D.C. She was working on a doctorate in political science at Northern Illinois University in DeKalb when deployed to Iraq.
Tammy joined ROTC in 1990 as a graduate student in Washington, D.C. and was commissioned to the Army Reserve in 1992 in Illinois. She decided to become a helicopter pilot because it was one of the only combat jobs available to women. Tammy holds the rank of Major in the Illinois Army National Guard. Her late father fought as a U.S. Marine in World War II and Vietnam.
On November 12, 2004, Tammy was co-piloting a Black Hawk helicopter north of Baghdad when a rocket-propelled grenade struck the cockpit of her aircraft and exploded. The two pilots struggled to bring the fatally-injured Black Hawk down. Then, once on the ground, Tammy passed out. Ten days later, when she woke up at Walter Reed Army Hospital in Maryland, she learned that the explosion would cost her both legs and had shattered her right arm.
She said that if not for her catastrophic injuries, she would like to return to duty in the Iraq war she believes George Bush and the Republican-controlled House and Senate have completely botched. "When the people of the United States allow us to send their loved ones in to harm's way to support the national interest, it is with the understanding that our policy makers will exercise good judgment, and not expend a single life needlessly ... from a policy perspective, invading Iraq was a mistake. We should have focused our military resources instead on pursuing the terrorists who attacked our country and on capturing Osama Bin Laden. Not only did we misdirect our human and financial resources; we squandered an enormous amount of international goodwill that we acquired after 9/11."
So, Tammy is running for Congress!
She's running for the seat vacated by Republican Representative Henry Hyde, who held the seat for 32-years. Hyde is best remembered as the Chief House Prosecutor (Inquisitor) in the attempted impeachment of President Bill Clinton. If Duckworth, a true American War Hero, wins this long-held Republican seat for the Democratic Party, she will also raise the bar in the battle to defeat George Bush and his Republican Roundup.
This November, on the second anniversary of her injuries in Iraq, Tammy Duckworth may very well be a member-elect of the United States Congress.
Best of luck, Tammy!
See Tammy Duckworth's campaign web site.
http://www.duckworthforcongress.com/index.asp
http://www.duckworthforcongress.com/index.asp
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