In March 2013, Tomas Young, a paralyzed veteran who had fought in Iraq, wrote an open letter denouncing former President G.W. Bush and Vice-President Dick Cheney as war criminals and murderers. He blamed them for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the resultant fatalities. His letter was read on “Democracy Now” to commemorate the 10th anniversary of the Iraq War.
In his letter, Young mentioned that he had joined the military in the wake of the 9/11 attacks. He hoped to go to Afghanistan to fight the terrorist leaders that had masterminded the attacks. He had not planned on going to Iraq and saw the invasion as pointless. In 2004, he was wounded in the line of duty in Sadr City, and the injuries left him paralyzed. Four years later, he developed a complication called an anoxic brain injury that weakened him further.
In his letter, Young wrote, “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.”
Young also pointed out that the Iraq War was a pre-emptive war, and such wars are illegal according to international law. He noted that Bush and Cheney had claimed that revenues taken from Iraq’s oil would pay for the war; it actually cost the US $3 trillion dollars.
At the time he wrote the letter, Young was in hospice care and considering suicide to end his physical and emotional pain. While he did change his mind, he eventually died a year later just a few weeks shy of his 35th birthday.
In 2009, Gordon Brown, who was then the Prime Minister of the UK, commissioned Sir John Chilcot to be the chair of an inquiry into the Iraq War. After years of work and controversy, Chilcot and his team completed their task, and they published the results, a 6,000 page report, on July 6.
Their findings showed that invading Iraq in 2003 had not been necessary. Saddam Hussein had not been a major threat to the UK, and that the invasion of Iraq had been launched “before the peaceful options for disarmament had been exhausted.” By invading Iraq, the UK and the US had also undermined the authority of the UN Security Council.
The war had dire results for Iraq; it left over 150,000 Iraquis dead, and a majority of those slain were civilians. A million more were “displaced,” which is a polite way of saying that they had been driven out of their homes.
The Chilcot report uncovered secret letters between Bush and Tony Blair, including one in which Blair pledged to support Bush, no matter what. British intelligence had provided “flawed information,” and the British Army was not prepared for war. Blair also hid intelligence from his own cabinet and ignored warnings.
The Chilcot report confirmed some of Young’s accusations. Both Young and Chilcot pointed out the strategic blunders made during the invasion and the occupation. They both agreed that removing Saddam Hussein had not improved the governance of Iraq by any stretch of the imagination. Both men agreed that the insurgency was “predictable.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Chilcot
http://www.truthdig.com/dig/item/the_last_letter_20130318
http://www.theguardian.com/politics/live/2016/jul/06/chilcot-report-live-inquiry-war-iraq