14 DAY TRIAL // An Iraqi war veteran has written what he believes will be the last letter he will be leaving behind, and it is addressed to President George W. Bush and former Vice President Dick Cheney, whom he dubs war criminals responsible for his impending death.
Tomas Young's open letter, published by Truth Dig, blames the pair for deceiving the American public into approving an unnecessary war that has left him paralyzed and hopeless and almost 1 million Iraqis dead.
According to the International Business Times, the then 22-year-old joined the war in Iraq immediately after 9/11, but was shot in the back by a sniper just five days into his service.
“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,” he writes.
The wound has left him paralyzed and in need of multiple procedures, while the Veterans Administration has provided insufficient medical attention, as they did towards other veterans.
“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,” he accuses.
The Ridgefield Press wrote in February that Tomas Young announced plans to end his life by refusing nourishment and medication, after a showing of the Body of War documentary in which his story is told in detail.
“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 tells the two politicians.