The war in Iraq was sold on lies. Lest we forget that Senator McCain falsely claimed Saddam Hussein was a clear and present danger for his pursuit of WMDs. Cheney asserted there was no doubt Saddam had WMDs being amassed to attack us. Condi Rice scared Americans with the statement of Saddam nuking us. Rumsfeld stated falsely that we knew Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. Bush lied about the British government learning Saddam was acquiring uranium from Africa. The video below illustrates the scale of the fraudulent march to the war in Iraq.
War has consequences. It should never be gotten into lightly. It should never be gotten into fraudulently. Yet, that is exactly what the Bush/Cheney administration did. Unfortunately the consequences on millions of Americans were severe. No one knows that more than Tomas Young. According to the Chris Hedges piece “The Crucifixion of Tomas Young” in truthdig, Young joined the army immediately after 9/11. He wanted to go to Afghanistan to hunt down those that attacked America.
However, while in basic training he became depressed when he realized he would be deployed to Iraq. He felt there was no reason to invade Iraq. When he asked for antidepressants he was told that he would be OK when he started killing Iraqis. Five days into his tour in Iraq, on April 4th, 2004, his Army truck with 20 soldiers was ambushed. Young was paralyzed.
Young was featured in the 2007 film “Body of War” that illustrated the difficulties of living under his condition. He was one of the first veterans to publicly oppose the war.
After many debilitating setbacks, he has had enough. He has made the decision to go into hospice care and stop his feeding. Young however will not go quietly. He wrote his final letter to George W Bush and Dick Cheney posted at Dangerous Minds. He starts:
To: George W. Bush and Dick Cheney
From: Tomas YoungI 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.
Later he says:
. …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.
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.
He shows he is not mad about being injured. He is mad that he was injured for a fraudulent war.
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.
He admonishes the care our country gives to those who fight for our “freedoms”.
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.
Yes indeed. We have continued to ask many to fight our wars; wars that have no benefit to the average American citizen. We fight wars to keep, to ensure we can have continuous access cheap overseas oil and resources. We fight wars to keep a military industrial complex greased with profits. The actual soldiers are but commodities used in the process of profit making. The total amount of Americans and innocent Iraqis “murdered” during the war ranges from a low of 110,600 to a high of 1.033 million. Judging from the body count reported and known during the Panamanian invasion, the latter is probably closer to reality.
The question is, other than the pilfering of the nation’s coffers, the nation’ innocence, the death of many of our bravest, the destruction of many families, what was accomplished? The answer is nothing. What was lost? Much of the middle class will be paying for the fraud that many in the Plutocracy have profited from.
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