Truthdig, March 18, 2013
The Last Letter
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.
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