Dying Vet's letter to Bush and Cheney...

http://dangerousminds.net/comments/d...eds_to_be_read


To: George W. Bush and Dick Cheney
From: Tomas Young

I write this letter on the 10th anniversary of the Iraq War on behalf of my fellow Iraq War veterans. I write this letter on behalf of the 4,488 soldiers and Marines who died in Iraq. I write this letter on behalf of the hundreds of thousands of veterans who have been wounded and on behalf of those whose wounds, physical and psychological, have destroyed their lives. I am one of those gravely wounded. I was paralyzed in an insurgent ambush in 2004 in Sadr City. My life is coming to an end. I am living under hospice care.

I write this letter on behalf of husbands and wives who have lost spouses, on behalf of children who have lost a parent, on behalf of the fathers and mothers who have lost sons and daughters and on behalf of those who care for the many thousands of my fellow veterans who have brain injuries. I write this letter on behalf of those veterans whose trauma and self-revulsion for what they have witnessed, endured and done in Iraq have led to suicide and on behalf of the active-duty soldiers and Marines who commit, on average, a suicide a day. I write this letter on behalf of the some 1 million Iraqi dead and on behalf of the countless Iraqi wounded. I write this letter on behalf of us all—the human detritus your war has left behind, those who will spend their lives in unending pain and grief.

I write this letter, my last letter, to you, Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney. I write not because I think you grasp the terrible human and moral consequences of your lies, manipulation and thirst for wealth and power. I write this letter because, before my own death, I want to make it clear that I, and hundreds of thousands of my fellow veterans, along with millions of my fellow citizens, along with hundreds of millions more in Iraq and the Middle East, know fully who you are and what you have done. You may evade justice but in our eyes you are each guilty of egregious war crimes, of plunder and, finally, of murder, including the murder of thousands of young Americans—my fellow veterans—whose future you stole.

Your positions of authority, your millions of dollars of personal wealth, your public relations consultants, your privilege and your power cannot mask the hollowness of your character. You sent us to fight and die in Iraq after you, Mr. Cheney, dodged the draft in Vietnam, and you, Mr. Bush, went AWOL from your National Guard unit. Your cowardice and selfishness were established decades ago. You were not willing to risk yourselves for our nation but you sent hundreds of thousands of young men and women to be sacrificed in a senseless war with no more thought than it takes to put out the garbage.

I joined the Army two days after the 9/11 attacks. I joined the Army because our country had been attacked. I wanted to strike back at those who had killed some 3,000 of my fellow citizens. I did not join the Army to go to Iraq, a country that had no part in the September 2001 attacks and did not pose a threat to its neighbors, much less to the United States. I did not join the Army to “liberate” Iraqis or to shut down mythical weapons-of-mass-destruction facilities or to implant what you cynically called “democracy” in Baghdad and the Middle East. I did not join the Army to rebuild Iraq, which at the time you told us could be paid for by Iraq’s oil revenues. Instead, this war has cost the United States over $3 trillion. I especially did not join the Army to carry out pre-emptive war. Pre-emptive war is illegal under international law. And as a soldier in Iraq I was, I now know, abetting your idiocy and your crimes. The Iraq War is the largest strategic blunder in U.S. history. It obliterated the balance of power in the Middle East. It installed a corrupt and brutal pro-Iranian government in Baghdad, one cemented in power through the use of torture, death squads and terror. And it has left Iran as the dominant force in the region. On every level—moral, strategic, military and economic—Iraq was a failure. And it was you, Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney, who started this war. It is you who should pay the consequences.

I would not be writing this letter if I had been wounded fighting in Afghanistan against those forces that carried out the attacks of 9/11. Had I been wounded there I would still be miserable because of my physical deterioration and imminent death, but I would at least have the comfort of knowing that my injuries were a consequence of my own decision to defend the country I love. I would not have to lie in my bed, my body filled with painkillers, my life ebbing away, and deal with the fact that hundreds of thousands of human beings, including children, including myself, were sacrificed by you for little more than the greed of oil companies, for your alliance with the oil sheiks in Saudi Arabia, and your insane visions of empire.

I have, like many other disabled veterans, suffered from the inadequate and often inept care provided by the Veterans Administration. I have, like many other disabled veterans, come to realize that our mental and physical wounds are of no interest to you, perhaps of no interest to any politician. We were used. We were betrayed. And we have been abandoned. You, Mr. Bush, make much pretense of being a Christian. But isn’t lying a sin? Isn’t murder a sin? Aren’t theft and selfish ambition sins? I am not a Christian. But I believe in the Christian ideal. I believe that what you do to the least of your brothers you finally do to yourself, to your own soul.

My day of reckoning is upon me. Yours will come. I hope you will be put on trial. But mostly I hope, for your sakes, that you find the moral courage to face what you have done to me and to many, many others who deserved to live. I hope that before your time on earth ends, as mine is now ending, you will find the strength of character to stand before the American public and the world, and in particular the Iraqi people, and beg for forgiveness.

—Tomas Young

http://dangerousminds.net/comments/d...eds_to_be_read


. The Iraq War is the largest strategic blunder in U.S. history. It obliterated the balance of power in the Middle East. It installed a corrupt and brutal pro-Iranian government in Baghdad, one cemented in power through the use of torture, death squads and terror. And it has left Iran as the dominant force in the region. On every level—moral, strategic, military and economic—Iraq was a failure. And it was you, Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney, who started this war. It is you who should pay the consequences.



—Tomas Young Originally Posted by wellendowed1911

While I wish this was not true....it is.

War criminals...

+1

War criminals... Originally Posted by Yssup Rider

Darth Cheney is like the kid who was caught with his hand in the cookie jar but is still trying to convince his mommy that he wasn't going to take a cookie.

I am not yet convinced that Shrub/Darth are "war criminals."

But I am willing to listen!

But I am willing to listen! Originally Posted by bigtex

Those voices you hear are in your head. Your man is losing daily.

You, and he, need scapegoats for refocusing attention from reality.

Keep up the good work .. in your head.

I take it that the fish did bite on your bait, either.

We should have left Saddam and his bunch alone.

But we were so appalled at their behavior, killing anybody they wished, rape rooms, causing instability in the entire region.

I will take a brutal Dictator over a bunch of Religious Zealots any day.

That seems to be the only choice in that Region..

As for the Soldiers letter. Tens of thousands of men could have wrote that same letter to President Truman after the Korean War, or to Presidents Kennedy-Johnson-Nixon for all of the undeclared fiascos we have been involved in since the last "declared war", WW-2.

Many of us got shot up or blown up in things that in retrospect seem like bad ideas.

And you might as well include President Obama in there as well. How many American Soldiers have died since he was elected?

How many American Soldiers have died since he was elected? Originally Posted by Jackie S

He wouldn't know, since it's not on a teleprompter, but that's irrelevant, since this thread is about blaming Bush/Cheney for all his headaches .... besides ...

BushBashing/CheneyChunking refocus the discussion from the egregious behavior of this administration and their systematic humiliation of this country on the World Stage, not to mention the persistent confirmation among our FORMER allies that we cannot be trusted or relied upon to assist in their defense. And we have 2 1/2 more years of this shit.

Cheney needs to go away. He can take Karl Rove with him.

I can quote their Fearless Dear Leader Hillary,

"what does it matter at this point'

this will my answer to every Political blunder for all parties for the rest of my life.

Those voices you hear are in your head. Originally Posted by LexusLover

Please provide the link to "those voices" (plural).

The only voice (singular, not plural) I hear would be the voice (singular, not plural) programmed into my iPhone (not my head) that provides me with a daily reminder that LLIdiot is a card carrying Shrub/Darth Cheney Apologist as well as the Patriarch of the Notorious Idiot Klan, errrrr Clan.

Is that the voice (singular, not plural) you're referring to? If so, there is no need to provide the link!

My curiosity has the best of me: Is there a voice in your head that tells you about a non-existent voice in mine? If so, that would explain why you believe the voice is in my head and not my iPhone.

He wouldn't know, since it's not on a teleprompter, but that's irrelevant, since this thread is about blaming Bush/Cheney for all his headaches .... besides ...

BushBashing/CheneyChunking refocus the discussion from the egregious behavior of this administration and their systematic humiliation of this country on the World Stage, not to mention the persistent confirmation among our FORMER allies that we cannot be trusted or relied upon to assist in their defense. And we have 2 1/2 more years of this shit. Originally Posted by LexusLover

There are more than ample threads on here that allow you and anyone else who cares to stomp on the current administration. But your revisionist history is sorely distorted. We had damn few allies at the end of the Bush-2 years because too many felt we had lied to them about the war just as Cheney/Rice/Bush lied to congress and the US populous. While Obama has done essentially nothing to actually HELP the perspectives in most foreign countries, he couldn't make them much worse either. Go back and look at why he was awarded peace prizes before he actually did anything--THAT was how bad C/R/B were despised around the world as they left. ANYONE was going to get "prizes" as a way to smear the outgoing faces in the mud (amazing how C. Rice has taken far less than her fair share on all this--a book smart person, no people skills person who had no concept of the difference between a text book and reality).

But I find it worse than stupid when you can sit here and try to say the Iraqi war was obama's fault. He has done little to move things forward in six years, but the mess was largely unsalvagable the day he walked into the helm. For you to somehow claim this soldier's letter should be directed at Obama--or worse, that he should somehow shut his mouth instead of voicing his anger because YOU don't want to tarnish Bush's legacy--is pathetic. Blaime Obama all you want--he deserves plenty of it--but quit being an obnoxious ass defending B/R/C for what they actually did.

Plenty of people volunteered--full of patriotism--to avenge 9/11, but in case you forget, that was AFGHANISTAN, not Iraq. Instead of doing what they should have--swat Afghanistan and the Taliban HARD and get out quick, B/C/R had to go back and "finish" what Bush-1 was wise enough NOT to finish, and took all that patriotic furor and wasted it--and wasted thousands of lives--in Iraq.

Rice was a "great brain" who had no clue about politics in the Arab world.

Cheney was a great businessman who saw tremendous dollar signs for Halliburton and others--many as sole-source contracts.

Rove was an evil man who loved to "play" politics and has no compultion about lying if it furthers "winning" at the polls.

Bush-2 I still believe is a decent man who was in so far over his head he ran away and hid--turning things over to an inept and corrupt bunch. He crawled into a shell, stuck his head in the sand, and was essentially absent from work for much of his second term.

So why shouldn't this soldier be pissed at B/C/R on his deathbed? Why shouldn't he be pissed at you for trying to deflect and say he should be pissed at obama instead?

But I find it worse than stupid when you can sit here and try to say the Iraqi war was obama's fault. He has done little to move things forward in six years, but the mess was largely unsalvagable the day he walked into the helm. For you to somehow claim this soldier's letter should be directed at Obama--or worse, that he should somehow shut his mouth instead of voicing his anger because YOU don't want to tarnish Bush's legacy--is pathetic. Blaime Obama all you want--he deserves plenty of it--but quit being an obnoxious ass defending B/R/C for what they actually did........................... .So why shouldn't this soldier be pissed at B/C/R on his deathbed? Why shouldn't he be pissed at you for trying to deflect and say he should be pissed at obama instead?
Originally Posted by Old-T

That's what I call an "Ass-Chewing." It couldn't have been directed at a more deserving guy!

+1,000,000

Well said!

The only voice (singular, not plural) I hear would be the voice (singular, not plural) programmed into my iPhone (not my head) that provides me with a daily reminder that LLIdiot is a card carrying Shrub/Darth Cheney Apologist as well as the Patriarch of the Notorious Idiot Klan, errrrr Clan. Originally Posted by bigtex

That's a very informative ringtone.

Darth Cheney is like the kid who was caught with his hand in the cookie jar but is still trying to convince his mommy that he wasn't going to take a cookie.

I am not yet convinced that Shrub/Darth are "war criminals."

But I am willing to listen! Originally Posted by bigtex

They are certainly war criminals, as are Obama, Biden and Hillary.