Please Sign the Pledge to Dying Iraq War Veteran Tomas Young Anti-War Activist & Subject of Phil Donahue's Documentary, BODY Of WAR
http://signon.org/sign/tomas-young-iraq-war?mailing_id=12024 <http://signon.org/sign/tomas-young-iraq-war?mailing_id=12024&source=s.icn.e m.cr&r_by=2500671> &source=s.icn.em.cr&r_by=2500671 OUR PLEDGE: Dear Tomas, As citizens of the United States and in honor of your memory, we pledge to work steadfastly to make sure we have a healthcare system that does not allow people in pain to suffer as you have been forced to suffer, and to make certain we elect public servants who do not squander American lives as the Bush administration and the congress serving at that time squandered yours. We see you. We hear you. We will not remain passive. We will not be silent. Farewell, Tomas, and Thank You. Greetings, I'm writing first to once again thank you for signing the Pledge to Tomas Young & to share with you that we are now 842 signatures strong. Bravo! Pledge leader, Iraq war vet & Huffington Post blogger, John Bruhns, will be delivering the pledge to Tomas in person sometime in the next few weeks. This brings me to the second reason I am writing. We want to get our signature count to just over a thousand & we need your help to do it. If you have 1 or 2 people who you can reach out to directly through social media, email or even by phone, who understand that our engagement is the oxygen our country needs to keep breathing, share the pledge with them. We are just 159 signatures shy from creating what could be a perfect gift to a beautiful soldier. Warm Regards, Erica Modugno http://signon.org/sign/tomas-young-iraq-war?mailing_id=12024 <http://signon.org/sign/tomas-young-iraq-war?mailing_id=12024&source=s.icn.e m.cr&r_by=2500671> &source=s.icn.em.cr&r_by=2500671 BACKGROUND: In February, prominent Iraq War vet/anti-war activist and subject of Phil Donahue's documentary, BODY Of WAR: www.bodyofwar.com - Tomas Young, announced he is ending his 9 year losing battle against unbearable, intractable chronic pain due to injuries he sustained just 5 days after his deployment to Iraq that left him paralyzed from the chest down. Now dependent on a feeding tube, Thomas announced that after celebrating his one year anniversary with his wife, he will begin to wean his body off the liquid nourishment & medications sustaining him and slowly "go away." Here is a Link to a Recent 3/21 Interview with Tomas on Democracy Now: <http://www.democracynow.org/2013/3/21/exclusive_dying_iraq_war_veteran_toma s> www.democracynow.org/2013/3/21/exclusive_dying_iraq_war_veteran_tomas Here is the Letter Tomas wrote to George W. Bush & Dick Cheney on the 10th Anniversary of the Iraq War: The Last Letter - A Message to George W. Bush & Dick Cheney from Tomas Young, a Dying Iraq War Veteran: www.truthdig.com/dig/item/the_last_letter_20130318/?ln ~ A Movie Produced by Phil Donahue was made about Tomas Young titled: "BODY OF WAR" - www.bodyofwar.com 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 Petition Background This petition is a pledge, a thank you and a farewell to 33 year old Tomas Young, one of the most prominent and inspiring Iraq War vets/anti-war activists to date, and who is now facing his own imminent death. _____ <http://www.signon.org/o?i=12020-2500671-Hc_Qtx> [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] ------------------------------------ --------------------------------------------------------------------------- LAAMN: Los Angeles Alternative Media Network --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Unsubscribe: <mailto:laamn-unsubscr...@egroups.com> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subscribe: <mailto:laamn-subscr...@egroups.com> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Digest: <mailto:laamn-dig...@egroups.com> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Help: <mailto:laamn-ow...@egroups.com?subject=laamn> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Post: <mailto:la...@egroups.com> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Archive1: <http://www.egroups.com/messages/laamn> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Archive2: <http://www.mail-archive.com/laamn@egroups.com> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Yahoo! 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