Iraq War veteran Tomas Young told HuffPost Live Thursday that despite being an outspoken anti-war activist critical of the Bush administration's decision to go to war in Iraq, he does not harbor personal resentment toward the former president.
"I'm not angry at George Bush because he seems like a relatively good guy," Young told HuffPost Live host Marc Lamont Hill. "I think he was manipulated by Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld and Paul Wolfowitz, and from what I hear he is divorced from them."
Young, who was injured in a sniper attack in 2004 and who suffered a pulmonary embolism in 2008, is choosing to end his life rather than continue to suffer as his health deteriorates. He said that he believes Bush "realized that [Cheney, Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz] bamboozled him, and he wanted to be liked and this wasn't his nature."
Still, Young wrote a powerful open letter to Bush and Cheney earlier this year to mark the 10th anniversary of the Iraq War. In the note, which he titled "The Last Letter," he spoke out against the "lies, manipulation and thirst for wealth and power" that he says drove the decision to invade Iraq:
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.
Hill asked Young if he would like to see that letter in the Bush library, which was being dedicated the same morning he appeared on HuffPost Live.
"I think it'd be a great thing for it to be in the library but I doubt they'll put it in there because it reflects the truth that they don't want to tell," he said.
Watch his response below:
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