“Totally lost”
“The best way to support our troops is to BRING THEM HOME NOW and to take good care of them when they get here.” [Gold Star Families Speak Out]“I remember sitting there [thinking], ‘Who is this person? This isn’t my son.’ I didn’t understand what he was saying. It seemed like it was my son’s body but the person was no longer my child. He was totally changed … he was lost. He was in his own world of everything going through his head, not really looking at me, just staring out and reliving things … saying things in fragments, so that you never really got the whole story; but you knew whatever he had gone through was horrific to him.” [Soldier’s mother Joyce Lucey]
“I found the dog tags Jeff had worn from the moment he had come home, no doubt beforehand. He took them off only two times: on December 24, 2003, when his younger sister went in to check on him and, with tears in his eyes, he had tossed the dog tags at her and said he was nothing more than a murderer; and when I found them resting on his bed the day he hanged himself, June 22.”
[Soldier Jeffrey Lucey] had identified the dog tags as belonging to “two men that he had killed, two unarmed Iraqi soldiers.” Though the military has never verified the story, “we believe it in our hearts. We know that it is the truth.” [Soldier’s father Kevin Lucey]
Joyce and Kevin Lucey appeared today on the Democracy Now program.
Jeffrey Lucey turned 22 the day before the U.S. began its full bore assault on the people of Iraq. His unit was activated and he was part of the first wave of troops to head into the combat zone, according to an entry on the Gold Star Families Speak Out website. By the time he came home, Jeffrey Lucey was a mess. He told gruesome stories and though all could not be verified, there was no doubt that this once healthy young man had been shattered by his experiences. He had nightmares. He drank furiously. He withdrew from his friends. He wrecked his parents’ car. He began to hallucinate. On the afternoon of June 22, 2004, surrounded by photographs of his platoon, his sisters, his parents, the family dog, and himself (the dog tags nearby), 23-year-old Jeffrey Lucey ended his life.
Suicide with another root
During the first six months of this year, 65 members of the Guard and Reserve took their lives compared with 42 in the same period last year. Thirty-two soldiers among them 11 Guard and Reservists killed themselves this past June. Seven of the suicides took place in Iraq or Afghanistan.
A few days ago U.S. president Barack Obama said in a speech before an audience of veterans that the U.S. ‘combat mission’ in Iraq is ending but with 50,000 soldiers remaining purportedly “supporting and training Iraqi forces, partnering with Iraqis in counterterrorism missions, and protecting our civilian and military efforts,” this seems doubtful. An occupying soldier is a combatant and Iraqis know it. Some believe “they never will see the end of America’s military presence in their country.”
The American justice and political activist Dahlia Wasfi (Wilmington, Delaware) told Press TV today that the al-Qaeda the U.S. is leaving force against whom to defend the U.S. embassy, the “al-Qaeda in Iraq,” was not in Iraq until we showed up. “If you have to use the most powerful military in the world to defend an embassy, then that might be an indication that people living there [the Iraqi people] do not want us there.” The cycle of violence and occupation will not end, only the faces will change. Private contractors and mercenaries [unregulated soldiers] will replace redeployed official U.S. troops and continue raking in millions upon millions of U.S. tax payer dollars to subjugate the Iraqi people.
Wasfi asked, “Who am I as an American to condemn any other country for exporting terror, when my country has over 700 bases in more than 120 countries around the world, and their objective there is to control and subjugate.
“The greatest threat to global security, if you ask people around the world, they tell you they are the United States and Israel. That is why I advocate for the immediate unconditional withdrawal of forces and mercenaries from Iraq and Afghanistan. I advocate cutting military aid to Israel in compliance with our domestic and international law.”
Government’s Mercenaries: impunity, human rights be damned
Despite or because of the United States’ wide use of unchecked “soldiers,” the world at large is concerned. A five-year- old UN working group on the use of mercenaries will brief permanent missions at the UN, non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and academics on a proposal resulting from its monitoring activities of mercenaries and private military and security companies (PMSC), their impact on human rights, and such activities’ lack of accountability. The independent experts reportedly are “calling for more stringent regulations, oversight and monitoring of mercenaries and PMSC at both national and international levels.”
How many (est.) in two-theater
U.S.-led
WAR DEAD?
Casualty sites reporting
August 6, 2010 (accurate totals unknown)
• Anti-war dot com Casualties in Iraq since March 19, 2003
[U.S. war dead since the Obama inauguration January 20, 2009: 185]
Wounded 31,888-100,000
U.S. veterans with brain injuries 320,000
Suicides [estimated] 18 a day
Latest update on this site July 23
• Iraq Body Count figures
97,172 – 106,047
• ICasualties IRAQ: 4,515 U.S., 4,733 Coalition
AFGHANISTAN: 1,216 U.S., 1,984 Coalition
Sources and notes
“With Military Suicides on the Rise, Parents of Two Soldiers Who Took Their Own Lives Say Obama’s Words Ring Hollow,” August 6, 2010, http://www.democracynow.org/2010/8/6/with_military_suicides_on_the_rise
Gold Star Families Speak Out, a chapter of Military Families Speak Out, is comprised of members whose loved ones served in the military during the period including the build-up to the war in Iraq (fall, 2002) to the present, and have been killed or have died. The group believes “the best way to support our troops is to BRING THEM HOME NOW and to take good care of them when they get here.” http://www.gsfso.org/FailedbytheVA.html; http://www.gsfso.org/
“Army Suicides Reach One a Day; Epidemic Spreads to National Guard and Reserves,” July 29, 2010,
http://www.allgov.com/Controversies/ViewNews/Army_Suicides_Reach_One_a_Day_Epidemic_Spreads_to_National_Guard_and_Reserves_100729;
“Obama Keeps Combat Troops in Iraq…and They will Still Engage in Combat,” August 5, 2010,
http://www.allgov.com/Top_Stories/ViewNews/Obama_Keeps_Combat_Troops_in_Iraq_and_They_will_Still_Engage_in_Combat_100805
“‘U.S. greatest threat to global security,’” August 5, 2010, http://www.presstv.ir/detail.aspx?id=137557
“UN experts on mercenaries seek stronger regulation of private security companies, Mercenary soldiers,” July 26, 2010, http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=35421&Cr=human+rights&Cr1=
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