Tomas Young, Dying Iraq War Veteran, Pens 'Last Letter' To Bush, Cheney On War's 10th Anniversary - Polidicks

[IMG]http://images.dangerousminds.net/uploads/images/thioansnsnsnsn.jpg[/IMG] [QUOTE]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.[/QUOTE] [url]http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/19/tomas-young-letter-iraq_n_2908335.html[/url] can't wait for the "both sides" appeasers with zero critical thinking skills to rush into this thread to poor Bush's aid

It's too bad people are only realizing these things in hindsight, now that we're finally winding down this war.

The entire Iraq war was so fucking unnecessary. Saddam had fucking nothing since we blew up all his goddamn country and he had spent the remaining years rebuilding it, how would he even gain weapons of mass destruction. Along with it being poorly planned out, entirely funded on credit, and generally goddamn unnecessary.

[QUOTE=The Baconator;39982499] can't wait for the "both sides" appeasers with zero critical thinking skills to rush into this thread to poor Bush's aid[/QUOTE] Actual critical thinking means considering all sides before passing judgement. That being said, the Iraq war was undoubtedly a horrible travesty of human rights that should not have happened. But placing all the blame at Bush and Cheney's feet is no good either, remember that 297 senators also voted for the Iraq War resolution.

[QUOTE=Squidman;39982709]Actual critical thinking means considering all sides before passing judgement. That being said, the Iraq war was undoubtedly a horrible travesty of human rights that should not have happened. But placing all the blame at Bush and Cheney's feet is no good either, remember that 297 senators also voted for the Iraq War resolution.[/QUOTE] wake up sheeple it was bush, all bush, the senate tried to stop him but he grew too powerful and he killed all who opposed his reign of terror

Bush was in irresponsible idiot. The people who helped him wage this war are also irresponsible idiots.

[QUOTE=Squidman;39982709]Actual critical thinking means considering all sides before passing judgement. That being said, the Iraq war was undoubtedly a horrible travesty of human rights that should not have happened. But placing all the blame at Bush and Cheney's feet is no good either, remember that 297 senators also voted for the Iraq War resolution.[/QUOTE] Everyone is responsible. [quote]Inside America, the atmosphere was entirely different, as I found after returning from Africa in early 2003. Large numbers of otherwise intelligent people had ended up supporting the war. Why? I think it had something to do with the iterative process of these sorts of discussions. You start out asking how to make sure Iraq doesn't have biological weapons, then you're asking how to respond to Iraq's refusal to comply with UN inspections, and before long through a series of individually rational steps you've arrived at a position that turns out to be a mistake. But the malign influence of intellectual conformity, the fear of being branded anti-patriotic or a foolish apologist for dictators, the nervous self-hatred of an intellectual class cowed into submission by an anti-intellectual president's popularity also all played a role. I remember spending a week in the offices of the New York Times's Outlook section in January; the anxiety to self-police against anything that could be perceived as liberal bias was palpable. Smart, serious people convinced themselves to accept the most spurious claims. What I took away from it all was the depressing conviction that all of us, including those of us considered the most responsible, well-trained and serious, are entirely capable of talking ourselves into lurid fantasies; that the actions we believe constitute difficult but necessary choices may in fact be the gestures of sleepwalkers battling phantoms. This is a lesson we learn and forget over and over again. Two days after Mr Bush's warning speech, I headed off to a new foreign posting, and watched the tanks roll into Iraq on a TV in the passenger lounge of a South-East Asian airport; a few hours after that, I was arriving in Vietnam. So was the rest of America, but it didn't know it yet.[/quote] [url]http://www.economist.com/blogs/democracyinamerica/2013/03/iraq-war[/url]

[QUOTE=The Baconator;39982499] [url]http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/19/tomas-young-letter-iraq_n_2908335.html[/url] can't wait for the "both sides" appeasers with zero critical thinking skills to rush into this thread to poor Bush's aid[/QUOTE] I'll take a side: You're an ass, Bush was a puppet, and Cheney is a living, breathing piece of shit. But in all seriousness: The hate on "both sides appeasers" is idiotic, not everyone has to be as mad as you, and "critical thinking" is about as meaningless in the popular lexicon as "synergy" is in the corporate one.

that monobrow

[QUOTE=The Baconator;39982499]can't wait for the "both sides" appeasers with zero critical thinking skills to rush into this thread to poor Bush's aid[/QUOTE] [media]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sGArqoF0TpQ[/media]

His case also reminds me of this quote from a first world war poet Samuel Hynes: [quote]a generation of innocent young men, their heads full of high abstractions like Honour, Glory, and England, went off to war to make the world safe for democracy. They were slaughtered in stupid battles planned by stupid generals. Those who survived were shocked, disillusioned and embittered by their war experiences, and saw that their real enemies were not the Germans, but the old men at home who had lied to them. They rejected the values of the society that had sent them to war, and in doing so separated their own generation from the past and from their cultural inheritance.[/quote] It can be depressing how little changes in a hundred years.

lions led by donkeys

if anyone on this earth deserves to be executed, it is the american generals, bush, cheney, and every senator who approved the invasion of iraq.

[QUOTE=DainBramageStudios;39983005]lions led by donkeys[/QUOTE] donkeys fed on sheep

[QUOTE=NoDachi;39983054]donkeys fed on sheep[/QUOTE] or wolves in sheeps clothing

[QUOTE=Squidman;39982709]Actual critical thinking means considering all sides before passing judgement. That being said, the Iraq war was undoubtedly a horrible travesty of human rights that should not have happened. But placing all the blame at Bush and Cheney's feet is no good either, remember that 297 senators also voted for the Iraq War resolution.[/QUOTE] While I agree that critical thinking requires considering both viewpoints, there's certainly an annoying trend where people talk about two sides of something like they're both valid and logical viewpoints when they're clearly not. I would definitely agree in this case, Bush and Cheney are not solely to blame but they certainly do carry a large portion of it.

[QUOTE=yawmwen;39983016]if anyone on this earth deserves to be executed, it is the american generals, bush, cheney, and every senator who approved the invasion of iraq.[/QUOTE] Lets party like it's 1790, guillotines and wine for everyone.

[QUOTE=Raidyr;39983397]Lets party like it's 1790, guillotines and wine for everyone.[/QUOTE] it is with regret that i pronounce the fatal truth: bush ought to perish rather than a hundred thousand virtuous citizens; bush must die that the country may live

[QUOTE=yawmwen;39983016]if anyone on this earth deserves to be executed, it is the american generals, bush, cheney, and every senator who approved the invasion of iraq.[/QUOTE] Yeah, that makes a lot of sense, instead of killing dictators, mass murderers, hatemongers, or serial rapists, take out a couple hundred fools who signed paperwork.

[QUOTE=yawmwen;39983016]if anyone on this earth deserves to be executed, it is the american generals, bush, cheney, and every senator who approved the invasion of iraq.[/QUOTE] Why the generals?

Everyone lost in this war. Everyone but the arms industry and their lobbyists. [img]http://www.sportsviews.com/media/files_image/user13007/22928fb8a32.jpg[/img]

[QUOTE=yawmwen;39983016]if anyone on this earth deserves to be executed, it is the american generals, bush, cheney, and every senator who approved the invasion of iraq.[/QUOTE] Yes, because we should stop killing each other by [I]killing each other.[/I]

[QUOTE=S31-Syntax;39983618]Yes, because we should stop killing each other by [I]killing each other.[/I][/QUOTE] to be fair i'm against executions on principle. just saying, if there is anyone we [i]should[/i] execute(there isn't), it would be these guys. [editline]20th March 2013[/editline] and why was my second post rated dumb when it was essentially me making fun of myself lol

[QUOTE=yawmwen;39983434]it is with regret that i pronounce the fatal truth: bush ought to perish rather than a hundred thousand virtuous citizens; bush must die that the country may live[/QUOTE] Posts like these are way to self important to be taken seriously. The idea that we should seriously consider executing individuals who fail to lead our country, and make erroneous descions such as the iraq war, is the kind of pseudophilosophy that this country also doesn't need.

Yeah whatever the Neocons used fear mongering to drive us into the war I don't give a fuck who voted for it, they did it, it's theirs to own. They destroyed this country's wealth and yes the Bush administration helped it all happen, history is not going to dull out the fact that he was the worst president ever, so there. Oh yeah and fuck everyone who tries to obfuscate the reality of how much outrage there was towards Bush in the 2006 midterms and in Obama's first election. That was real, that had meaning.

If Saddam [B]had[/B] to be taken down, it should have been during the first Gulf War when there was a coalition of western and middle-eastern governments acting together. And that's a big if - the removal of a dictator, as we've all seen, doesn't always end up well. Instead we ended up with thousands if not more troops from several countries killed for, in the end, nothing.

the only good warmonger is one on trial

I read the entire letter. Every fucking word of it rings true, and this guy has really done his homework. The reason Iraq was invaded in the first place is because Bush was looking for an excuse, and at the first hint that there might be WMDs there (Oh, they made that assumption when they found that Iraq had ordered aluminum rods, which in the end turned out to be for 81mm conventional rockets) they went in and destroyed that country.

[QUOTE=DainBramageStudios;39983005]lions led by donkeys[/QUOTE] well I don't know how well the military training of the generals in WW1 was, but if the generals were just doing things how they were taught to them or when they were ordered to by a Superior like the government then their going to have to do some futile assaults on enemy trenches.

[QUOTE=tr00per7;39985457]well I don't know how well the military training of the generals in WW1 was, but if the generals were just doing things how they were taught to them or when they were ordered to by a Superior like the government then their going to have to do some futile assaults on enemy trenches.[/QUOTE] They were using Boer War ere tactics in what was, at the time, a modern war, and it went badly.