[Westchester911truth] "unending pain and grief" - for Bush/Cheney?

[Tom O'Reilly]

The Bush family - Cheney - "Bandar Bush" - and their other Saudi partners in
this "Crime of the Century" are pure evil incarnate.

 

  _____  

From: westchester911truth-bounces at two.pairlist.net
[mailto:westchester911truth-bounces at two.pairlist.net] On Behalf Of Connie
Smith
Sent: Tuesday, March 19, 2013 7:19 PM
To: September 11th list
Subject: [Westchester911truth] "unending pain and grief" - for Bush/Cheney?

 

 

 

 

 

 

Happy 10th anniversary of the Iraq War, which more than 12 million
protesters around the world tried to prevent -- and which most intelligent
people KNEW was a pack of lies and utterly immoral to begin with.

 

A few terse comments of my own are in parenthesis, although of course, this
dying veteran says it all best.  Below is "The Last Letter" by Tomas Young.
First, here are excerpts, in case you don't have time for it all --

 

Connie

 

by Tomas Young: "...writing this on behalf of those veterans whose trauma
and self-revulsion for what they have witnessed, endured and done in Iraq
that have led to... 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...and those who will spend
their lives in unending pain and grief."  (That SHOULD BE Bush/Cheney, I'd
say.)

 

"...Your positions of authority, your millions of dollars of personal
wealth, your public relations consultants, your privilege and your
power...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."  (I
never could understand why anybody would vote for them.)

 

"I joined the Army two days after the 9/11 attacks...I wanted to strike back
at those who had killed some 3,000 of my fellow citizens."  (I almost hope
this man does not learn that Bush/Cheney were involved and Afghanistan was
framed.)

 

"The Iraq War is the largest strategic blunder in U.S. history...And it was
you, Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney, who started this war. It is you who should pay
the consequences...for your insane visions of empire."

 

"I have, like many other disabled veterans, come to realize that our mental
and physical wounds are of no interest to you... We were used. We were
betrayed."

 

"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."

 


 

 


 



The Last Letter


A Message to George W. Bush and Dick Cheney >From a Dying Veteran 

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. 

 

 

 
<http://www.commondreams.org/sites/commondreams.org/files/imce-images/tomas_
index.jpg> 

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