The Atlantic

Senator to Donald Trump: Americans Deserve to Know the Costs of a North Korea Conflict

In a letter to the president, Tammy Duckworth cites the lack of debate before she was deployed to Iraq—and insists that it not happen again.
Source: Brian Snyder / Reuters

This morning, Tammy Duckworth, a Democratic senator from Illinois, wrote Donald Trump to demand an accounting of what the president and his advisers mean when they talk, with growing urgency these days, of “military options” against North Korea and its nuclear-weapons program. “We must never allow the consequences of war to be hidden from Americans,” she asserts in a letter obtained exclusively by The Atlantic.

Duckworth, a retired lieutenant colonel, lost her legs in 2004 when Iraqi insurgents shot down her Blackhawk helicopter. “When my colleagues start beating the drums of war, I want to be there, standing on my artificial legs under the great Capitol dome, to remind them what the true costs of war are,” Duckworth a couple years

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