The night before he hanged himself with a garden hose in the basement of his parents' home

[NNN0LHI]

http://www.boston.com/news/local/articles/2008/05/27/rallys_veterans_activists_seek_to_avoid_glorifying_war/

Globe Staff / May 27, 2008

The night before he hanged himself with a garden hose in the basement of his parents' home, Jeffrey Lucey asked if he could sit on his father's lap. For the better part of an hour, Kevin Lucey quietly held his 23-year-old son, an Iraq war veteran who had returned depressed and deeply ashamed of what he said was his brutal treatment of Iraqis. When Kevin Lucey discovered his son's body the next night, there was a suicide note: "I am totally embarrassed at the man I have become and I hope you can remember me only as a child."

Jeffrey Lucey was not counted among the 4,082 American troops who have died in the war so far, but, yesterday, veterans groups and peace activitists remembered the Marine Reserve lance corporal along with tens of thousands of others whose deaths are attributable to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. As sunbathers lolled on the grass of Christopher Columbus Park, protesters dropped a carnation into Boston Harbor for each of the 80 Massachusetts service men and women who died in the two conflicts, then tossed bouquets on the water for troubled veterans such as Lucey as well as the countless Iraqis who have died since the 2003 US invasion.

"This government has steeped all of us . . . in a shroud of shame," said Kevin Lucey of Belchertown, who has filed a federal lawsuit against the Veterans Affairs secretary for failing to get his son the help that could have prevented his 2004 suicide. "Please help us stop it now."

Organizers of the waterfront rally, including Veterans for Peace and Iraq Veterans Against the War, said they wanted an alternative way to mark Memorial Day from traditional "militaristic" parades and speeches that glorify war. For instance, President Bush yesterday talked about soldiers in Iraq who died "doing what they loved most: defending the United States of America." The reality, said Memorial Day for Peace organizers, is that troops and civilians alike are dying for Bush's foreign policy mistakes.

[marylanddem]

1. This is so incredibly sad.

[unhappycamper]

2. Here's some pics from the event

About 150 people showed up on Monday. On Sunday the Lucey's joined us in Middlebury, VT for a IVAW/VFP Peace concert/fundraiser.

Here's some Memorial Day pics --> http://www.flickr.com/photos/tej/sets/72157605277752431/


on edit to add: Our local PBS radio station (WBUR) had a brief segment of Joyce's speech - I listened to it on the way home.

[barbtries]

23. thank you

i'm at work will check it out more later.
it looks like you got a good crowd and some press coverage. wtg
gotta stop crying and start working...

[Tinksrival]

38. Thanks for the link

I looked at the photos and left a note. No soldier should be forgotten, no matter the circumstance.

[godsentme]

58. Thanks for the pics unhappy camper

Just wanted to say thanks for sharing your pictures. From fellow VFP'r, San Diego.

[unhappycamper]

61. Thanks and welcome to DU, godsentme.

And welcome home, Brother.

[Philosoraptor]

3. ...............

[flor de jasmim]

4. It is so painful, knowing that the shame is Bush's, not Lucey's -

may he rest in peace.

[malaise]

16. Bush is shameless

I wish I believed in karma but I'll settle for the Hague

[sandnsea]

32. Not just Bush's, that's way too easy

No it was not in my name, and many fought hard to stop it. But it was not just Bush and it did not just start in 2002.

[panader0]

5. So sad

Thank you Don for posting so often about the war. It should be issue number one. Instead, the primary war has taken over, not only here at DU, but in the press as well.

[Double T]

6. What a pathetic waste of humanity completely attributable to bushco.

We will ALWAYS remember out troops and the tremendous sacrifices they and their families have made.

[zippy890]

7. sad to read but important

:cry:

I remember this story when it came out. I used to live out near Belchertown Ma.

[annabanana]

8. That poor boy.

The fault was not his. The techniques of brainwashing are so far advanced that the kids that join up for patriotism's sake don't stand a chance.

[reggie the dog]

9. tears in my eyes

so powerful, so sad....not that W or the VP give a damn, but many of us do.....the guy would be 27 today, only 2 years younger than me.....lousy stupid war...

[JerseygirlCT]

10. That's so horribly sad. And so, so unnecessary.

So much pain - for what?

[Junkdrawer]

11. Simple but horrible calculus...

Psychopathic orders to non-psychopathic troops = record suicide rates for returning veterans

[ThatsMyBarack]

12. FUCK! YOU! BUSH!

Soldiers died "doing what they loved most: defending the United States of America." :wtf:

I know there was nothing to LOVE about killing for LIES and PROFIT! :mad:

[Solly Mack]

13. :(

[El Pinko]

14. Awful.

As a father this really hits me.

It's no wonder I feel half-sick whenever I see POS Bush's face.

[FloridaJudy]

15. No words.

:cry:

[flvegan]

17. Shame on Bush, shame on our (largely) spineless Congress.

[Brewman_Jax]

18. This is sad

I hope he finds the peace that he was so desperately seeking.

[Prisoner_Number_Six]

19. I never thought I'd be ashamed to be an American.

That day has come.

This has GOT TO STOP.

:cry: :cry: :cry: :cry: :cry: :cry:

:grr: :grr: :grr: :grr: :grr: :grr:

[yardwork]

20. As the mother of two sons, my heart aches for this man and his family.

[fascisthunter]

21. Words Can't Take this Father's Pain Away

but I wish they could... I really really wish they could.

[gatorboy]

22. Here's more on this young man:

http://www.thisisrumorcontrol.org/node/370

Jeffrey’s father Kevin wonders what his son meant by that last line “We don’t know if what he meant was his innocence,” says Mr. Lucey. “As parents we tried to protect him from pain but over there he was immersed in it.”

Jeffrey spent 5 months in Iraq with the 6th Motor Transport Battalion and came home safe and sound, his parents thought, in July of 2003. But in his journal Jeffrey was “writing down how he saw dead people, not dead soldiers,” says Mr. Lucey. “Somebody at Camp Pendleton said, ‘if you keep talking like that, you’ll not be able to go back home. You’ll have to stay here from two to four months.’” His sister’s wedding was coming up, so on the debriefing questionnaire beside the box that asked if psychiatric help was needed, Jeffrey ticked “no”. He just wanted to go home.

Soon after Jeffrey got back people started noticing that something was wrong. One friend who’d known him since high school, an active-duty Marine who’d served with him in Iraq put it this way “His attitude changed, we used to play a lot of sports before and then after Iraq I’d call him and say do you want to shoot some hoops or something and he never would.”

He refused to take off the dogtags that he wore around his neck, tags he said he taken from two Iraqi soldiers. Jeffrey told his father he’d been ordered to shoot the two unarmed men at close range. “Jeff had described how his gun was shaking and he looked at the eyes of one of the men and he thought, God this is someone’s son, he could be somebody’s father.” says Kevin Lucey. Then, as Jeffrey told it, someone shouted “pull the fucking trigger Lucey”. Later, back home, he told his sister he felt like a murderer.

<snip>

The first home visit with the vet center counselor was scheduled for June 22 at around 5 pm. Mr. Lucey says his son was feeling hopeful. But something went wrong. When Kevin Lucey got home at quarter to 7, his son was dead, hanging by his neck in the basement. “I can still feel Jeffrey in my arms as I cut him down,” he says “I tied to support him with my knee…he looked like he was sleeping.” Mr. Lucey says he found the Iraqi dogtags lying across Jeffrey’s bed. Later, the family learned that the counselor never showed. It seems he’d gotten lost on the way.

[earth mom]

24. This is heartbreaking....

How many lives have been ruined here and in the middle east? :cry:

[Juan_de_la_Dem]

25. this makes me very sad

[SeattleGirl]

26. That is so incredibly sad.

That poor young man and his family. :cry:

And Bush gave up golf. :grr: :grr: :grr:

[pleah]

27. "This government has steeped all of us ....in a shroud of shame,"

Truer words were never spoken.

[tblue37]

28. I remember reading about a rural farm woman who

said, "I gave the Army a sweet boy, and they gave me back a murderer."

I think the many of the PTSD cases are not just from the stress of being under fire all the time, but also from the horror of doing things that go against one's most deeply held moral convictions. A friend of mine who did a year in Iraq from 2004 to 2005 suffered severe PTSD because he had to kill a young Iraq boy who was aiming a rifle at him. He thought the boy looked the same age as his own 10-year-old son (though I suspect the boy might have been a few years older than my friends well-fed, healthy 10-year-old was). He couldn't get the image of that boy out of his head, and he couldn't forgive himself for shooting the kid, even though it really was a self-defense situation.

[magellan]

29. If BushCo possessed a thimbleful of this young man's conscience....

RIP, Jeffrey Lucey.

[many a good man]

30. Let's mail garden hoses to the White House

I'm embarrassed and ashamed for what we've become as a country (again).

[uppityperson]

31. k&r damn damn damn

[IsItJustMe]

33. Never hear the truth in our corporate msm. SAD.

[tabasco]

34. The truth of war that cowards Bush and Cheney will never comprehend

and never care about.

[OwnedByFerrets]

35. So much sadness surrounding this travesty...nt

[defendandprotect]

36. "This government has steeped all of us . . . in a shroud of shame," said Kevin Lucey

And a quote I also remember well which another poster reminded us of ---
"I gave the Army a sweet boy, and they gave me back a murderer."

I also share the sentiments of the poster who commented on Bush's lack of conscience . . .
and I agree: Bush should have been in the basement and this young man should have been
receiving medical care to restore what had been stolen from him by Bush brutality --
the right to do no harm and to be able to assert his own conscience though under military
control.

This young man shows us how our military is turning soldiers into murderers they do not want to be --
and finally, how difficult it is to destroy his conscience.

Certainly in failing to stop Bush and his fellow murderers, I also feel this shame.

[me b zola]

37. Some stories that I read leave an indelible mark on my soul

This is one of them.

[defendandprotect]

39. Push ---

[grannylib]

40. What a heartache of a story. There are no words for how much I

want to see Chimpy and Cheney and their entire criminal cabal in orange jumpsuits and shackles, on their way to prison for life for their war crimes.
And they don't even see the blood on their hands.
My prayers go out to Jeffrey's family.

[jwirr]

46. They hanged men like *ss & co. at Nuremberg.

[grantcart]

41. Suicides in theatre have skyrocketed highest level in 26 years

http://www.truthout.org/article/gary-ater-suicides-iraq-worse-than-you-thought


Sunday 19 August 2007

Many of you have seen the headlines regarding the military suicides that have reached the highest level in 26 years. There were 99 confirmed Army suicides in 2006 (2 additional deaths are pending investigations), up from 88 in 2005 and the highest since 1991 during the Persian Gulf War. The rate of suicides grew in 5 years from a low of 9.1 per 100,000 soldiers in 2001 to the 2006 rate of 19.4 per 100,000. (The suicide rate for the general population is 11 per 100,000.) Preliminary figures indicate that the number of suicides for troops that have served in either Afghanistan or Iraq will also increase for 2007.

[guyton]

42. accountability

This is why we need war crimes trials ... not for revenge, but to remind people that there are real people dying for all the wrong reasons.

Impeachment? Too late.

War crimes trials? A must.

And not just for Bush & Co, but for every last congress-slime that got deceived by the administration and voted for this illegal war. Ignorance, laziness and gullibility is not a defense for mass murder.

[hisownpetard]

43. Sad beyond words. Beyond words.

[jwirr]

44. When I was going to a Christian college one of my professors was

a man who had been a child in Germany at the time of Hitler. We were discussing corporate (group) sin and he told us that even though he was a child he was part of the group so it was his sin to. I hate George Walker Bush with a passion that cannot be measured but I to am a part of the group. God forgive me for what we have done to our own young men and women and to the Iraqi citizens.

[trickyguy]

45. This just tore my heart out to hear about young Kevin.

The guy who should be hanging from the garden hose sits in the White House instead.

Totally immune. So very sad.

[Contrary1]

47. Just another ,

[beac]

48. k&r with a heavy, breaking heart for Jeffrey and the too-many others like him.

[blue sky at night]

49. My town had 4000 plus....

yellow ribbons on the cemetery fence, each with a fallen soldier's name on it...I am sure they think it is some brilliant tribute to the fallen hero's, but for me it is a hugh display of the waste of human life, a protest against the moronic idea of this Iraqi war. People are so jaded by patriotism, but for me anymore I can't attend the memorial day services or the parades either, it just sickens me. When we can make money from Peace, then we will have Peace.

[progressoid]

50. .

;(

[mia]

51. I'm so sorry for this family. This sent chills up and down my spine.

My reason for being involved in politics is to help end the suffering. I hate war. I hate the fact that my country is the leader in the art of killing.

[onager]

52. Echo from another war long ago...

I posted this in a Memorial Day thread, but it seems appropriate for this awful story:

I knew a simple soldier boy
Who grinned at life in empty joy,
Slept soundly through the lonesome dark,
And whistled early with the lark.

In winter trenches, cowed and glum,
With crumps and lice and lack of rum,
He put a bullet through his brain.
No one spoke of him again.

You smug-faced crowds with kindling eye
Who cheer when soldier lads march by,
Sneak home and pray you'll never know
The hell where youth and laughter go.

Siegfied Sassoon, "Suicide in the Trenches"

[Sunnyshine]

53. Please, help us stop it now. They answered their call to serve. Let's answer their calls for help.

Our government sucks and should be investigating the VA day and night for years. I seen what they did to my own father, a Korean War vet. Deny him benefits, screw up his medicine, shuffle him to different nursing homes. That was 15 years ago, so nothing has really changed, except for two wars and 4,589 lives, tens of thousands maimed, and endless suffering for those like Jeffrey Lucey.

Let us all strive to achieve solutions and peace, in their honor.

We must fight back for these folks who are hopeless, and demand they be acknowledged to get them into treatment immediately. That depth of pain is terrifying to experience. I can only imagine what its like. Upon return, they should be meeting with past war veterans, be enrolled in therapeutic prevention groups (alternative to only VA help) and getting benefits to cover them for life.

Please, volunteer at your local VA hospital, get involved, and talk to people.
If you know someone like this, contact support groups like:

http://www.befrienders.org
http://www.sprc.org/featured_resources/trainingandevents/calendar/index.asp
http://www.virtualarmory.com/WellBeing/map.aspx

* Suicide Prevention Lifeline: 1-800-273-TALK (8255)
* MilitaryOneSource - 6 Free Counseling Sessions: 1-800-342-9647
* National Guard Community Center: 1-888-777-7731
* Wounded Soldier and Family Hotline: [phone]

[spoony]

54. Excellent post, thank you for those resources

I can barely even wrap my mind around the tragedies. They're more than mind-boggling. They're heart-boggling.

[autorank]

55. Great Post k*r

This is the sequel to Arman Katayan's great CBS News series on suicides among veterans.

His creative researchers found 120 suicides a week for vets. Then they found a memo from the VA
head who had denied their numbers. He said, don't let out the 1000 a month rate for vet suicides.
That's higher than CBS.

But this one loss is truly poignant. Joining with the best of intentions and see carnage on a level
unimaginable.

The authors of this war need to take a curtain call - in The Hague.

[Cleita]

56. So sad and I feel so sorry for the parents who

have to suffer through this. Bush be damned. May he and Cheney and Rummy and everyone else who started, aided and abetted this shameful and heinous war rot in Hell and may they be tried in the World Court for war crimes and be found guilty and spend the rest of their lives in prison.

[Veracious]

57. May God Damn Bush!

[democrank]

59. So very sad.

~PEACE~

[Hubert Flottz]

60. "dying for Bush's foreign policy mistakes"

More like dying because Karl Rove needed a "War President" and the oil companies/PNAC owned Bush.

[katerinasmommy]

62. Someone has to pay for this

I can't even express the sick and sad feeling I have reading about this. I think about my own precious little one and how she sits in my lap for comfort. Then I think about this poor little boy looking for comfort sitting on his Daddy's lap and I keep losing it. Somehow, someone has to pay for this. Yes I know that won't help this vicitimized family. But maybe in the future the bastards that love to kill our children will have second thoughts.

[NuttyFluffers]

63. -_- so sad

:cry:

[Mad_Dem_X]

64. So, so tragic

There are no words. :cry:

God damn George W. Bush and his evil cronies!

[Boxerfan]

65. Rest sweet in your fathers arms....Good GOD what a shame!!

I'm a father...This one hit me hard. I read this last night & woke up thinking about the poor little boy who just needed his Daddys arms...I'm crying now & I know I should just buck it up before I get caught.Damn...

I will remember you young jeff. It is a stain on our heritage you should suffer from an old mans lies.

Rest in peace young angel...Rest in peace.

[imperial jedi]

66. This is horrible

Bush and his entire criminal cabal need to be brought to justice. I morn for my country and what has been done to it. May Jeffrey RIP.

:cry::cry::cry:

[SammyWinstonJack]

67. "Laura and I have had a fabulous year!" Time of your life, eh george?

:puke: