Last week the world watched as Barack Obama embraced an Iraq war vet at a Veterans Day ceremony. Tammy Duckworth lost her legs on a mission in Baghdad four years ago. Now she is among a rising number of ex-soldiers reshaping US politics and may yet serve under the new president. Here she talks about her fight for her comrades - and her own fight for life
As the man and woman walked slowly towards the war memorial in Chicago last week, the figure of Barack Obama was instantly recognisable. But as the pair hugged after laying a wreath in the ceremony, it was the young woman who caught the attention of the media and whose photograph flashed around the world.
It was difficult not to notice her. As the President-in-waiting embraced her, it was clear that she was a double amputee. Rarely has the human cost of America's war in Iraq been so painfully and poignantly illustrated.
The woman was Tammy Duckworth, one of the most remarkable figures to emerge from the conflict. Horribly wounded by an insurgent attack, the former helicopter pilot is now part of a wave of Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans who are returning home and reshaping US politics. They are running for office, heading government departments and campaigning on issues they care about.
Duckworth is now one of the most visible and high-profile among them. There are even whispers that she might replace Obama in the Senate, taking the seat left vacant when he moves to the White House, or that he might appoint her to his cabinet as head of the Department of Veterans' Affairs. But on that cold Chicago morning last week, as Duckworth and Obama paid tribute to America's war dead, it was not politics that were on Duckworth's mind. It was her former comrades-in-arms, recently redeployed back to the country where she lost her legs. 'I was actually thinking about my crew,' she told The Observer.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/nov/16/usa-us-foreign-policy-iraq-war-barack-obama
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