"Our nation is starving for leadership, for people who care. What are we doing as a nation?" With those words at La Salle University last week, Northeast Philly native Patrick Murphy launched his campaign for the 8th District seat in the U.S. Congress. That he's calling for change isn't what makes the Democrat's ambitions distinct. The fact that he's the second Iraq war veteran to run for Congress does.

Murphy, who's facing Republican Michael Fitzpatrick, wants to bump the minimum wage above $7, scale back the Patriot Act and, most of all, "excuse my French, but demand a goddamn pull-out schedule from Iraq." (He concedes America will probably need to maintain some military presence in Iraq for many years to come, but says it must be inconspicuous.)

As a U.S. Army paralegal in the ar-Rashid district of Baghdad during 2003 and 2004, he courted controversy when he charged a local rogue sheikh with stealing electricity from neighbors, storing weapons in his mosque and attacking two female university students. He was also the attorney for 3,500 American troops.

"A lot of guys would come to me with letters from their wives," he says. "In those letters were applications for divorces. There was only so much those women could stand. You'd tell them, 'I'll be home by July,' but then your tour gets extended, and now it's Labor Day, then Christmas."

Today, Murphy is seeking an endorsement from Democracy for America (DFA), a political action committee "dedicated to supporting fiscally responsible, socially progressive candidates at all levels of government." If he wins the endorsement, he could stand to reap financial contributions from voters and PACs that condition their support on DFA's imprimatur.

The first Iraq war vet to seek major political office was Paul Hackett III, a Democrat and a trial lawyer who lost by 3.5 percent in a historically Republican stronghold of Ohio. Murphy isn't phased by the fact that no one has yet achieved what he's setting out to do; he's still quick to challenge the powers that be.

"This administration does not care for you. They care for special interests," he says. "This is not the America I've fought for. … But now people are seeing the light. Before they could say that Bush is protecting us [against terrorists]. Now, the images of New Orleans are seared into our minds."