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Meet future Congressman Awesome
TAMPA, Fla. — “I thought I had a path set in life: I was going to be a lawyer,” Tom Cotton told The Daily Caller on the last day of the Republican National Convention at the end of the August.
“But the 9/11 attacks happened in my last year of school and that diverted me from that path.”
Cotton, 35, is running for Congress in Arkansas’s Fourth Congressional District. He was in his third year in law school at Harvard, where he also earned his undergraduate degree, when America was struck 11 years ago. Though he didn’t join the military immediately — he said he “had some student loans” to pay off — he ultimately enlisted as an Army Ranger, serving in both Iraq and Afghanistan on the front lines.
A 2011 profile of Cotton in the Weekly Standard said that when Cotton went to the recruiting station, he was immediately tagged as a perfect candidate for the Judge Advocate General Corps. “Cotton politely interrupted,” said the profile. “‘I don’t think you understand. I’m here to volunteer for the infantry.’”
While serving in Iraq, Cotton became something of an Internet celebrity. After The New York Times printed a story in 2006 on a secret U.S. government program to target al-Qaida’s finances, he wrote an open letter to the Times that went viral.
“Congratulations on disclosing our government’s highly classified anti-terrorist-financing program (June 23),” the letter addressing the two reporters who wrote the story and the paper’s then-executive editor Bill Keller opened.
“I apologize for not writing sooner. But I am a lieutenant in the United States Army and I spent the last four days patrolling one of the more dangerous areas in Iraq.”
bitterclinger
September 11th, 2012
After the Clintoons and the Huckster, it looks like Arkansas is finally redeeming itself.
I hope his campaign signs say, “Pick Cotton!”
Stirrin the B.S.
September 11th, 2012
I would like to think that Tom Cotton is the new breed of American patriot citizen who gets it; the person who understands America’s role in the geo-political fabric, and who understands that the world needs a moral anchor to keep it from obliterating itself.
And that is why I hate liberals. They can’t see beyond their own need for personal self-gratification to do what a free nation/world needs for long term survival.
Unneutral
September 11th, 2012
There is no such thing as too many Tom Cottons.
Aunt Liz
September 11th, 2012
It’s guys like this that make the future look brighter to me. Valor is not gone by a long shot.
MaryfromMarin
September 12th, 2012
Heroes step up to the plate.
I wish Mr. Cotton the best–he deserves it.
House of Kell
September 12th, 2012
OORAAHHH!!!!
Lead the Way, brother…Lead the Way!
~To one of my own
2/325th AIR
82nd Airborne Division
Ranger
(77 thru 91)