Theebs

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http://dangerousminds.net/comments/...r_to_george_bush_dick_cheney_needs_to_be_read

Just plain sad.

Dying vet’s ‘fuck you’ letter to George Bush & Dick Cheney needs to be read by every American


03.19.2013
11:11 am


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
 
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JBond

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I can see why this "letter" would appeal to partisan hacks that choose to rewrite history or have little understanding of the military. While I appreciate this young mans service that is one of the worse letters of this "type" I have ever read.

He presumes to speak for every service member that was killed or injured? I do not think so. He also conveniently left of his hate list all the democrats that supported the war including President Clinton. He forgot about all the members of congress that funded the war year after year after year.

By the way, when you join the military you do not get to pick what you will and will not do. He should have done a little research on that before signing on the dotted line.

As far as his poor medical care is concerned, that is despicable, but then again that is the best the government is capable of. We better all get used to that level of care going forward.
 

Jon88

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This is just like Mackenzy Bernadeau blaming Garrett that he tripped again in the weight room and hurt his shoulder.
 

superpunk

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This is just like Mackenzy Bernadeau blaming Garrett that he tripped again in the weight room and hurt his shoulder.

Except in this case, Garret (Bush/Cheney) lied to everyone about the floor in the weight room being slippery as fuck.

I've lost track of the metaphor but it would be nice if we could try these fucks as war criminals.
 

superpunk

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Grey area in that there isn't deception there and the war was already started (by people who acted with deception).

If it can be proved he did things that violate international laws then sure.
 

superpunk

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But really what you'd be asking for there is for someone to be punished for coming in and doing his best to clean up someone else's mess. Which is idiotic.

The drone programs and loss of civil liberties are shit, but don't compare to lying in order to lead an entire nation into war. So get fucked on that premise.
 

JBond

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Pretty sure supplying arms to terrorists is a no no...Libya and Egypt come to mind not to mention the narco-terrorists he armed in Mexico.
 

iceberg

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(Reuters) - President Barack Obama has signed a secret order authorizing covert U.S. government support for rebel forces seeking to oust Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi, government officials told Reuters on Wednesday.

Obama signed the order, known as a presidential "finding", within the last two or three weeks, according to government sources familiar with the matter.

Such findings are a principal form of presidential directive used to authorize secret operations by the Central Intelligence Agency. This is a necessary legal step before such action can take place but does not mean that it will.

As is common practice for this and all administrations, I am not going to comment on intelligence matters," White House spokesman Jay Carney said in a statement. "I will reiterate what the president said yesterday -- no decision has been made about providing arms to the opposition or to any group in Libya."

The CIA declined comment.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/03/30/us-libya-usa-order-idUSTRE72T6H220110330

now, you just going to ignore this like when i showed you obama DID call for the sequester?
 

JBond

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Liberals and facts can not coexist. They lock up. Their tiny little minds just shut down.

The revisionist history they have created is plain silly. They act like the President of the United States should ignore threats that the entire world agreed existed. Clinton, the UN, every EU leader, everyone said Sadam was a threat and that he had WMD's. Of course we know he had them, because we sold them to him, but that is a separate topic.
 

superpunk

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Liberals and facts can not coexist. They lock up. Their tiny little minds just shut down.

The revisionist history they have created is plain silly. They act like the President of the United States should ignore threats that the entire world agreed existed. Clinton, the UN, every EU leader, everyone said Sadam was a threat and that he had WMD's. Of course we know he had them, because we sold them to him, but that is a separate topic.

Actually we (the white house) knew he didn't probably didn't have them. The lies that were told to the public and congress don't change that.
 

iceberg

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Remember that time that Bill Clinton led us into war with Iraq?

he said if he had to he would.

then there's an entire page of quotes from democrats saying saddam must go.

but as per your MO, you just smart off and run away in giggles.
 

superpunk

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http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2013...officials-cheney-lied-about-911-hijacker.html

Former senior U.S. intelligence official familiar with the interrogation issue said that Cheney and former Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld demanded that the interrogators find evidence of al Qaida-Iraq collaboration…

For most of 2002 and into 2003, Cheney and Rumsfeld, especially, were also demanding proof of the links between al Qaida and Iraq that (former Iraqi exile leader Ahmed) Chalabi and others had told them were there.”

It was during this period that CIA interrogators waterboarded two alleged top al Qaida detainees repeatedly — Abu Zubaydah at least 83 times in August 2002 and Khalid Sheik Muhammed 183 times in March 2003 — according to a newly released Justice Department document…

When people kept coming up empty, they were told by Cheney’s and Rumsfeld’s people to push harder,” he continued.”Cheney’s and Rumsfeld’s people were told repeatedly, by CIA . . . and by others, that there wasn’t any reliable intelligence that pointed to operational ties between bin Laden and Saddam . . .

A former U.S. Army psychiatrist, Maj. Charles Burney, told Army investigators in 2006 that interrogators at the Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, detention facility were under “pressure” to produce evidence of ties between al Qaida and Iraq.

“While we were there a large part of the time we were focused on trying to establish a link between al Qaida and Iraq and we were not successful in establishing a link between al Qaida and Iraq,” Burney told staff of the Army Inspector General. “The more frustrated people got in not being able to establish that link . . . there was more and more pressure to resort to measures that might produce more immediate results.”

“I think it’s obvious that the administration was scrambling then to try to find a connection, a link (between al Qaida and Iraq),” [Senator] Levin said in a conference call with reporters. “They made out links where they didn’t exist.”

Levin recalled Cheney’s assertions that a senior Iraqi intelligence officer had met Mohammad Atta, the leader of the 9/11 hijackers, in the Czech Republic capital of Prague just months before the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

The FBI and CIA found that no such meeting occurred.
 
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