Bush and Cheney as per Tomas Young

I found myself reading the open letter written by Tomas Young to former President George W. Bush and his vp-in-crime, Dick Cheney, several times. Young, for those who don’t know, is the Iraq veteran who was shot and paralyzed after serving five days in Iraq. He is currently in hospice care. And as Young tells us: “My life is coming to an end.”

Things that stick out from his written words:

• 4,488 U.S. soldiers dead in Iraq;
• hundreds of thousands wounded – both physically and psychologically;
• the husbands and wives who have lost spouses because of this war;
• the many who committed suicide in Iraq – at a rate of one a day; and,
• more than one million Iraqis dead.

I would also add the trillions of dollars spent in a war based on lies perpetrated by the prez, his political nanny and those who followed them. Money wasted (and much stolen) on an illegal campaign paid forward. In other words, money borrowed from U.S. taxpayers, which helped thrust us into the economic debacle we’ve been embroiled in since 2008.

War crimes? You could make a case for it. But remember it’s the U.S. who seems to rule the world these days. So they set the rules. We are freedom fighters and proponents of democracy so that all others might be free… well, most everyone except those who don’t fall under our purview – the terrorists!

The fact is some have questioned who the real terrorists are…

I leave you with the last words in Young’s letter:

“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.”

Alvaro F. Fernandez