A Casualty Of Bush's War

[Indie Media Magazine]

By Mark Clinton and Tony Udell

01 October, 2004

JEFFREY LUCEY is not a name that will soon be forgotten by the more than 100 people who attended a memorial service for him at Holyoke Community College (HCC) in Western Massachusetts. Lucey, a Marine veteran of the Iraq war and a student at the college, committed suicide on June 22. He was 23.

A Casualty Of Bush's War

[whistle]

1. Your links aren't working

[Indie Media Magazine]

3. fixed it, i kept putting the http:// part....sorry.

[acmavm]

2. Oh geez, poor kid. This is so damn sad.

<snip>

He never did tell his family the whole story of his experience in Iraq, only bits and pieces. It was horrific enough. He spoke of elderly people killed as they tried to run from Marines rolling into Nasariya.

He spoke of a small Iraqi boy, bloody and prone in the dusty street, shot in the head and the chest and still holding a small, bloodstained American flag in his hands. He spoke of his horror as an American tank lumbered down the street, how he had bolted from his own vehicle and, as gunfire rippled the sand around him, moved the tiny corpse to the sad sanctuary of a nearby alley.

He spoke of how he had been ordered to shoot two Iraqi prisoners. He remembered how he had looked into their eyes and hesitated, watching as they shook in terror, and thinking of their families. He remembered that an officer had shouted, "Pull the *censored*ing trigger, Lucey!" He remembered shooting the soldiers and watching them die. He told his father that there were "other things" he did not want the family to know about.

<snip>

[mckara]

4. And None of It Was Necessary

I wonder if bush has a conscience? How can he justify the death and destruction of a war that never needed to be fought?

[whistle]

5. That is sad and is the direct result of Bush policies regarding Iraq...

... the war on terror and how U.S. casualties are being treated by this administration. I know Kerry will change this. Help is on the way.

[TomClash]

6. And they think was Kerry's lying . . .

. . . when he spoke of atrocities after the war.