Veterans for Common Sense

When the United States invaded Iraq in March 2003, Americans were told Iraqi oil would cover the costs of the war and rebuilding. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld scoffed at estimates of $100 billion. Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz of Columbia University and Harvard University professor Linda Bilmes raised a stir in 2006 by estimating the real cost of the war to be $1 trillion. That estimate has been tripled and the title of their new book is “The Three Trillion Dollar War.”

Q1: The invasion caused about a million deaths and many disabilities to the invaded people. The material losses included important archeological artifacts. Someday, hopefully, the invaders will be held legally responsible for it all. Reparations. Justly, death benefits should be based on the larger of standard benefits for invader and invaded. $4 trillion war?  Submitted by Dennis Couzin from Berlin, Germany

A1: When you look at the destruction of art and priceless artifacts, it is clear that many costs of this war simply cannot be quantified. But they are costs, nonetheless. Of course the loss of life cannot be really quantified either. We do address this issue in chapter 6 of the book. Answered 04/16/08 12:05:58 by Linda Bilmes

Q2: While I understand your tabulation and overall methodology, aren’t you getting a lot of shock value from simply stating the cost at $3T? After all, over the 70+ years these costs will hit the Treasury, the average annual cost is about $43B–hardly as shocking. I realize these cost are front loaded, but there are other long-term Federal costs that are far larger. BTW: I’m not a war supporter. I just can’t stand sensationalized stories. Submitted by Dave from Washington, DC

A2: We actually tried to be very conservative. You can easily support a number that is much higher and we decided not to do that. The $3 trillion is really simple: it is just the sum of the $800bn we will have spent by the end of 2008, the present value of a conservative estimate of health care and disability compensation for the veterans, plus the cost of ongoing fighting, replacing military equipment, and paying interest on the money we borrowed. This reaches $3 Trillion. For example, oil prices have gone up from $25 before the war to over $100 barrel now. The war changed the supply&demand equation and put upward pressure on oil prices. But in our book we only attribute $5-$10 of this increase to Iraq, because we don’t want to be sensationalist. Answered 04/16/08 12:03:11 by Linda Bilmes

Q3: As an American living in London, it’s easy to see that the war in Iraq has badly damaged the American “brand”. This has to be affecting the bottom line at corporations associated with the US (McDonald’s, Nike, Ford, United Airlines, etc.). Is there reason to believe that these corporations are concerned about this issue and are lobbying for a saner foreign policy? I’m especially interested because I’m skeptical that the grass roots has much influence on foreign policy decisions made in DC. Submitted by Brad Duchaine from London, UK

A3: I lived in London for 12 years and so I understand your question very well. Anecdotally we know that US businesses are concerned about rising anti-Americanism, but it is difficult to quantify the impact on business. What the corporate world is beginning to realize is that the war is having a negative effect on the US and global economy, and of course this is something they do care about. The best way to get them involved in to draw the link between the war and the economy, which is one of the reasons we wrote the book. Answered 04/16/08 11:59:26 by Linda Bilmes

Q4: You’d also have to put $3T into context. Over the 70 or so years these costs will be incurred, the cumulative US GDP will be roughly $2,000 – 4,000 trillion (quadrillions!). The Federal budget is usually about 20{cd9ac3671b356cd86fdb96f1eda7eb3bb1367f54cff58cc36abbd73c33c82e1d} of GDP. So that’s $400 – 800 trillion in Federal revenue. Entitlements (Social Security, Medicaid, Medicare, etc.) will consume over 50{cd9ac3671b356cd86fdb96f1eda7eb3bb1367f54cff58cc36abbd73c33c82e1d} of the budget. That’s $200 – 400 trillion. So, next to that, $3T isn’t so shocking—especially when the majority of this money is recirculated into the US economy. Again, I’m not advocating the war or spending $3T to “win” it. I’m just questioning, given the proper context, if the amount is so over the top. Submitted by Dave from Washington DC

A4: No, the money is not recirculated into the economy. It mostly goes to pay Filipino and Nepali contractors in Iraq to do laundry, cook meals, drive trucks and buses, clean dormitories, repair the 42,000 light vehicles stationed there and of course to pay world oil prices for fuel to keep our vehcicles,tanks, humvees, MRAPs, helicopters and aircraft fueled. The US is a wealthy country, but even we cannot afford to squander $3 trillion into a war that has very little benefit for the US economy. If we were spending that money in the US – building our infrastructure, for example, then it would have a net positive multiplier for the US. Answered 04/16/08 11:56:04 by Linda Bilmes

Q5: what are we trying to achieve? this has changed over time. Is this a war over oil? And, is the method we are using the correct. Submitted by gary siu from honolulu, hawaii

A5: There are many theories, of course. Many believe it had to do with oil. Personally I think it was a combination of hubris and then appalling lack of planning, coordination and inability to accept that it was a mistake. Answered 04/16/08 11:53:00 by Linda Bilmes

Q6: If the Iraq and Afghanistan wars continue for another five or even ten years, and if the number of our service members deployed to the two war zones increases from 1.7 million to as high as 2.5 million, what do you estimate the the number of new veteran patients treated at VA will be? What about the number of new veteran disability claims filed against VA? And what about the costs to taxpayers for VA disability claims and VA healthcare? And, finally, why doesn’t the press report the existing 75,000 battlefield casualties and the 300,000 VA patients already caused by the Iraq and Afghanistan wars? Thank you. Submitted by Paul Sullivan from Washington, DC

A6: In our book, we estimate 2 scenarios, one for 1.8 million servicemen and the other for 2.1 million — you can read the difference it makes in terms of claims and costs in chapter 3 of the book. I dont know why the media doesn’t report the true number of casualties. The veterans groups have sent letters to the media explaining this situation. Several people (including Senator John Edwards who just recently sent a letter to the New York Times about this issue) have spoken out about it. And some intelligent reporters have understood and reported the true numbers. But many still take the Pentagon’s numbers without questioning them. Answered 04/16/08 11:51:22 by Linda Bilmes

Q7: What was the cost of the Vietnam war in today’s dollars? Submitted by Arsalan Ziazie from Los Angles, CA

A7: The estimate from Amy Belasco of the Congressional Research Service, in her testimony to Congress, October 2007 was $670 billion. Answered 04/16/08 11:42:48 by Linda Bilmes

Q8: I am truly grateful to you both for this very impressive investigation and analysis. I am an actuary engaged in a first quick attempt to assess the overall reasonableness of your analysis, before I continue to broadcast to my family and friends that the war will cost them at least $10,000 – and maybe $20,000 – each. (I am also briefly reviewing the book as an elementary writing exercise for a college class.) Questions on the Inflation and Discount Rates: 1. I am confused about the assumption for the future inflation rate and its interaction with the discount rate in converting all future costs to 2007 dollars. Can you elaborate? 2. Presumably, past costs were accumulated to 2007 dollars at 1.5{cd9ac3671b356cd86fdb96f1eda7eb3bb1367f54cff58cc36abbd73c33c82e1d}? 3. If the government could pay for disabled veterans’ benefits by purchasing, at some point, single premium annuities with an implicit interest rate higher than 1.5{cd9ac3671b356cd86fdb96f1eda7eb3bb1367f54cff58cc36abbd73c33c82e1d}, would this not be the best rate to discount these costs at?  Submitted by mary from columbus, oh

A8: We assume a real discount rate of 1.5 per cent. That is equivalent to assuming a nominal discount rate of 4.5 per cent if future inflation is 3 per cent, if future inflation is 4 per cent, it is equivalent to 5.5 per cent. Past cots zere accumulated to 2007 dollars by first adjusting for inflation, and then accumulating at 1.5 per cent. if the government could purchase an annuity that adjusted payments for inflation, and carried an implicit interest rate on these real payments higher than 1.5 percent, that would be an appropriate rate to use. Let us know if you find such an annuity.  Answered 04/16/08 09:57:03 by Joseph Stiglitz

Q9: How much money could we have saved if we did not have “contractors” doing the jobs that used to be done by our military? (i.e. security, food & laundry services, construction, etc.) Submitted by dave from anaheim, ca

A9: It is hard to get a precise number. It appears that, at least in many case, using contractors at least doubles the cost. Part of the reason that it is difficult to get a precise number is explained in the book: the government appears to be financing both the insurance premia for death and disability and much of the benefits (as strange as that may seem.) There is no full accounting. The overall cost of using the contractors is, however, far greater. We have created competition for our military–contractors doing the same work as soldiers are paid far more. This is bad for morale, but it also means that when their service time is over, many leave to work for the better paying contractors. In response, the military is force to pay big re-enlistment bonuses. But the contractors have cost us in other ways: they focus on minimizing costs and maximizing profits, and those objectives are often not consistent with our broader strategic objectives, as we explain in our book. Answered 04/09/08 19:23:19 by Joseph Stiglitz

Q10: Before the war started, US polls 82{cd9ac3671b356cd86fdb96f1eda7eb3bb1367f54cff58cc36abbd73c33c82e1d} of Americans against war, 78{cd9ac3671b356cd86fdb96f1eda7eb3bb1367f54cff58cc36abbd73c33c82e1d} of British against war is this our democracy or does this constitute dictatorships. Submitted by arloughlin from glasgow

A10: We have a republican form of government, in which we delegate responsibility for most decisions to Congress and the President. If we don’t like the decisions they make–if they make decisions that are flawed, or decisions that go against the wishes of the vast majority of Americans–they will face the consequences in elections. But information is imperfect. Citizens are not fully informed of what has happened–especially when you have a President who has deliberately tried to keep key information from the American people. Special interests make large campaign contributions, and help shape public perceptions. As a result, our elected representatives are not as “accountable” as they should be. Answered 04/09/08 19:18:19 by Joseph Stiglitz

Q11: dear sirs,did u ever estimate the cost of continouus lies spoken by bush administration in the context of iraq war? Submitted by aqeel ahmad from pakistan

A11: One of the big costs of the “deceptions” (not sure what else to call them) of the Bush Administration is that it has lost its credibility. It said there were weapons of mass destruction, and there none. It was there as a connection between Iraq and 9/1l, and there wasn’t. It said the war would cost between $50 to $60 billion; now we are spending that amount up front every three to four months. It has hidden from the American people the total costs of the war, even the total number who have been injured. it has repeately told the American people that victory is just around the corner. We keep turning corners, trying new strategies, and victory–whatever that means–remains as elusive as ever, even as we have lowered our expectations. If Americans lack confidence in the most recent assertions, is it a surprise? Answered 04/09/08 19:14:12 by Joseph Stiglitz

Q12: The Iraq War has removed a significant amount of oil from the world market. How much has the absence of this oil contributed to the rise in prices? How great is the negative impact of the oil price increase on the American economy, especially now that we are in a recession. Submitted by John Reinke from Redmond, WA

A12: In response to several earlier questions, I explained how the war contributed to the rising oil prices. In our book, we attributed only $5 to $10 of the $75 to $85 rise in the price of oil to the war, but I actually think the war was responsible for a far larger part of the increase in the price of oil. As we explain in the book, the high oil prices have had a very, very negative effect ont he economy–the effects of which were covered up by the Fed. Money spent on Saudi Arabian or Kuwait oil (or oil pruchased from any other oil exporter) is money that is not available to be spent here at home. That means the economy is weaker than it otherwise would be. As I mentioned, the Fed covered up these effects through a flood of liquidity and lax regulations. It fueled a housing bubble and a consumption boom. But it can’t do it any more. So in the coming years, we’ll be feeling the bite of the high oil prices much more. Answered 04/09/08 19:10:30 by Joseph Stiglitz

Q13: The price of crude oil has increased dramatically since the Iraq invasion. How much of this price increase can be attributed to the Iraq operation and is it due primarily to speculation in commodities (“the terror premium”), demand for fuel by the US military, or inflationary effects of war spending? Submitted by Mitch Friend from Springfield, MO

A13: Before the war, the price of oil was around $25 a barrel. Now it is $100 to $110 a barrel. In our book, we attribute a mere $5 to $10 to the war. We believe that number is very conservative–and so our total number is very conservative. Futures markets predicted that the price would remain around $25 for at least the next decade. The realized that there would be increased demand from China and other emerging mrkets. But they expected supply to increase in tandem with demand–mainly increased supplies from the low cost providers, those in the middle east. The war changed that equation. Thus, the war can be given “credit” for most of the price increase. It set forth an adverse price dynamic. At the high prices, oil exporting countries didn’t need to sell as much oil to meet their budgetary needs. Indeed, with prices quadrupling, they face a big problem of knowing what to do with the money that is literally pouring in. To many, it seems the best strategy is to keep more of the oil below the ground. The US military does use up huge amounts of fuel–it is a big factor in the cost of the war. But from a global perspective, the demand is relatively small.  Answered 04/09/08 19:06:32 by Joseph Stiglitz

Q14: This success of this so-called “surge” is based basically on the fact that the U.S. is throwing money at anyone who will take it. Millions and millions of dollars…now that this policy is unraveling why do you think that the main stream media has totally ignored the real reasons for the administrations false claims that the “surge” has been a success? Submitted by William R. Waitkus from Phoenix,AZ

A14: I find it difficult to understand fully media coverage of the war. Even before the war, protests marches got little coverage. The New York Times coverage of scandals are well known. I think there is a certain fear of being labelel unpatriotic. Interestingly, when our earlier paper on the cost of the war came out in early 2006, it received far more extensive coverage in Europe than in the United States. Our new book has, from most quarters, received very good coverage–but there are some glaring omissions. While on the op-ed page, there has been extensive discussion of our book, reportedly, the New York Times Book Review has decided not to review the book! The surge is clearly a complicated story. We should put the claimed success in perspective: the level of violence is still high. Such levels of violence anywhere else in the world would be viewed with alarm. We have just reduced the level of violence to the intolerable level that it was earlier. No one is sure about why the violence has been reduced, and therefore whether the lower levels will be sustained. The increased troops probably played a role; so too may have decisions in Iran about the extent and kind of support they are providing a variety of groups in Iraq. This in turn may have played a role in the unilateral truce by Sadr. What we do know is that the strategy of “buying” militia to our side is a risky one. it is similar to the strategy that the British used in the south, in Basra. Events of the past couple of weeks have shown some of the problems with that strategy. Answered 04/09/08 19:01:02 by Joseph Stiglitz

On this day, our son’s – Jeffrey – anniversary, we want to remember him; have his sufferring and death have meaning and to celebrate his life.
 
To remember Jeffrey – the l’il guy who would get so excited and be full of mischievious glee and laughter; the little boy who would make his mom smile with pride and joy; the little boy who would scamper up in to his Dad’s lap giggling; the pre-teen who would be playing baseball or making his three point shot on the basketball court or zapping Snow White and Cinderella at Disney World with his hand buzzer; the teenager who would stand with his friend during his friend’s 10 year old brother’s funeral or be up at the Quabbin with me as I taught him to drive with one hand as he sipped his Dunkin Donut coffee in his other hand; the older teen who after blowing off the first three years of high school finally settled down and completed his Senior year fine;the volunteer at Camp Sunshine during his junior year as he dressed up as a woodland creature and danced with this beautiful young girl afflicted with a life threatening illness – and who are now both dancing beyond the stars; the young man who would take risks and often learn the hard way – adding to our many white hairs;  the Holyoke Community College student who actually enjoyed the learning and the questioning; the would be reservist who enlisted in December of 1999 up in a hotel room believing that May, 2000 was so, so far away; the Parris Island boot camp graduate who was now an United States Marine Reservist; the marine reservist who on 9/11/01 stated he was ready to go to New York for rescue and recovery; the marine who was sent to Kuwait and then finally Iraq for the invasion; the marine who returned six months later physically safe and unscathed but at the same time mortally wounded by hidden wounds; a mortally wounded veteran on whom this government and VA healthcare system turned their backs on him; our son who suffered and died.
 
To have Jeffrey’s suffering and death have meaning – to make all mindful of the unseen and hidden costs of war; to have  those responsible be prepared to FULLY support the troops and their loved ones after they return as well as teach future governments never to go to war – be it by choice or necessity – without preparing the veterans’ healthcare system to immediately and fully address all veterans’ wounds physical and hidden; to have the healthcare system be the best that it can be and to give the best healthcare possible for all regardless where one may live; to make this nation through her government truly and in truth support her troops and veterans as they return immediately, effectively and completely; whose story of torment, his struggle to survive  and then his eventual death will touch others and be a beacon in their own lives to that which will help them – that through his own story, others may live.
 
To celebrate his life – though we will always mourn, grieve, cry and feel his loss as a huge gaping hole in our hearts and souls, we will always try to bring to life all his memories of joy, glee, laughter, love and his accomplishments. For as it has been said and sung – Despite the gaping holes and loss in our lives – as has happened in the lives of so many wonderful and beautiful souls and families of many nations – we would have never given up one second of Jeff’s 23 years – his short life – to escape the pain of his loss.
 
To all who have walked with us even if it has been but for a moment on this painful journey of the past four years, we want to express our most sincere and deepest gratitude – and that together with Jeff and all the fallen and their loved ones, we all can make a difference for the so many who will walk similiar paths in the future.

by Joyce and Kevin Lucey, Parents of Iraq War Veteran Jeffrey Lucy, who died on June 22, 2004.

Background news article from three years ago: “Something happened to Jeff” – Jeff Lucey returned from Iraq a changed man. Then he killed himself.

By Irene Sege, Boston Globe, http://www.boston.com/yourlife/health/mental/articles/2005/03/01/jeff_lucey_returned_from_iraq_a_changed_man_then_he_killed_himself/

March 1, 2005, Belchertown, MA – Less than three weeks before he committed suicide, Jeffrey Lucey, lance corporal in the Marine Reserves, veteran of Operation Iraqi Freedom, totaled his parents’ Nissan Altima.

He wasn’t drunk when he ran the car off the road and landed between two trees, which was surprising given how much he used alcohol to dull the torment roiling inside his head. But he’d taken the Klonopin prescribed to ease his anxiety.

So when Kevin and Joyce Lucey visit their only son’s grave, they drive his Hyundai, with the Marine Corps decal Jeff put on the back window and the Marine seal he affixed to the bumper and the ”Support Our Troops” magnet and Kerry-Edwards sticker they added after he died. They pass yellow ribbons still fluttering from trees in front of the house where they raised three children, and when they arrive at the Ludlow cemetery, an expanse of small, fluttering American flags tells them Jeff finds his final rest in the company of scores of other veterans.

Jeffrey Michael Lucey was 23 and suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder when he hanged himself with a garden hose in the cellar of his family’s home last June 22. His family shares his story in hope of helping those, among the hundreds of thousands who have served in Iraq and Afghanistan, who will battle similar demons.

“He wasn’t an important person, but he was very important to us,” his mother says. ”What’s important is what happened to him when he came back.”

On the TV in the Lucey living room, beside a teddy bear Marine, is a photograph of Jeff as a Cub Scout, his face impish enough it’s possible to imagine the day, when he was about 13, that his father came home to find him tobogganing off the roof into deep snow. On the piano is a prom picture of him and Julie Proulx, his girlfriend since high school.

“He was your everyday kid,” says Kevin Lucey, a 54-year-old therapist for sex offenders. ”He wasn’t a saint. He snuck out of his window. He’d be meeting up with his friends, and we thought he was sleeping. He started calming down when he and Julie started going out.”

Jeff joined the Marine Reserves in 1999, in part to pay for schooling his parents were prepared to finance. ”He also wanted to prove something to himself,” Kevin says. ”He knew the Marines were the toughest branch.”

In May 2000, Jeff left his Western Massachusetts hometown for boot camp, then was assigned to the Sixth Motor Transport Battalion in New Haven. In January 2003, the unit was activated. Lucey arrived in Kuwait in February, in advance of a war he opposed. In a tiny notebook with a camouflage print cover, he kept a journal that ends as the invasion of Iraq begins.

“Emotions such as anger towards our anything but wise commander in chief for ripping us out of our daily lives and pasteing us into a waste depository named Kuwait,” he wrote on March 8, 2003, ”or pain and heartache from missing the loved ones we left behind and of course the depression that forms when these two emotions are mixed together. With the deep thought associated with depression blooms uncertainty. Uncertainty can drive any man crazy, the uncertainty about what’s going to change about your life upon your arrival home.”

The journal ends March 20, apparently in Iraq, with news of a scud missile landing nearby. ”The noise was just short of blowing out your eardrums. Everyone’s heart truly skipped a beat and the reality of where we are and what’s truly happening hit home,” he wrote. ”We now just had a gas alert and it is past midnight. We will not sleep. Nerves are on edge.”

In July 2003 — after serving in Iraq in a light transport company that his comrades say ferried such cargo as ammunition, food, and Iraqi prisoners of war — Lucey, tan, thinner, and smiling, arrived by bus at the Marine reservist center in New Haven.

“We felt so good,” his father says. “He survived.”

Although it’s unclear what proportion of Iraq veterans will suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder, the numbers will undoubtedly surge as more troops come home. A 2003 study published in The New England Journal of Medicine last summer found that about 15 percent of returning soldiers have PTSD, anxiety, or depression. Among Vietnam veterans, 25 to 30 percent developed PTSD. ”In the nature of the disease, onset is delayed,” says Dr. Thomas Burke, director of mental health policy for the Department of Defense. ”It remains to be seen whether early intervention and the treatments that are available today will catch some of it early and result in these vets having only 15 percent.”

The department counts 32 suicides among American forces while serving in Iraq and another 10 in Afghanistan. How many killed themselves after returning home is harder to pinpoint, but the Army and Marines report at least 29 have.

Beginning last March, as winter gave way to spring, Jeff seemed increasingly distressed. By mid-May, he was spiraling downward. He heard voices, hallucinated, rarely left his room, drank alone. He pushed his girlfriend away. Seeing these changes, his family hid dog leashes and removed combat knives from their home. They disabled Jeff’s car after he crashed theirs. They took him to the Northampton VA Medical Center and the Veterans Center in Springfield. They barely slept.

They had attributed earlier changes they’d noticed to the readjustment period the military told families to expect. ”Julie noticed a distance. Sometimes he would get lost in a daze,” Kevin says. ”He was drinking, but nothing to where it ended up being, and it wasn’t continual.”

Lance Corporal Pablo Chaverri, a childhood friend who enlisted with Jeff, rarely ran into him in Iraq but saw him again back home. ”He just seemed down,” Chaverri writes in an e-mail from Iraq, where he’s been redeployed. ”We ended up going to Maine for a weekend during October of 2003. I didn’t notice anything until we started driving back home. He was very quiet and didn’t say much. That was not like him. He was the type to talk and get into conversations. He seemed zoned out and just didn’t seem right. He was not the type of guy that would admit he is weak.”

On Christmas Eve, in a sign of the despair to come, Jeff begged off the family’s traditional visit to his grandparents. His sister Debra, 21, came back early. As they talked in the kitchen, Jeff threw two Iraqi dog tags he wore at her. ”He said, ‘Don’t you know your brother’s a murderer?’ ” Debra recalls. ”I didn’t know what to say. I said, ‘You’re my brother.’ “

The most chilling story Jeff told his family was of being ordered to shoot two Iraqi prisoners and then keeping their dog tags, a claim the Marines investigated and determined did not happen. A Marine buddy, Lance Corporal David Samen, remembers seeing Jeff find one dog tag in the sand. Jeff also talked of running from his truck and scooping up a dead child. Jeff was buried with the small, bloodied American flag he said the child clutched.

“Something happened to Jeff that had him totally fall apart and be destroyed. What it was I don’t know,” Kevin says. ”Whatever happened — whether it was a collection of things, whether he assumed collective guilt — there is no question his experiences there planted something within him that was almost like a cancer.”

The bed in Jeff’s room is neatly covered with a Marine blanket, unlike in his last weeks, when it stayed unmade. Otherwise, the room is much as he left it. Under the window are several pairs of military boots and folded uniforms. On the door is a poster of a Marine ready for battle. Empty bottles of beer and brandy rest on his bureau. His handprint smudges the window.

The house carries the sweet scent of lit aromatic candles, and a blaze crackles in the living room fireplace. Here, last spring, Jeff found his dad’s copy of ”Post Traumatic Stress Disorder” by Matthew Friedman. He turned to a list of symptoms — ”recurrent distressing dreams,” ”reliving the experience, illusions, hallucinations, and dissociative flashback episodes,” ”estrangement from others,” ”difficulty falling or staying asleep,” ”outbursts of anger.” Repeatedly Jeff said, ”I have that.”

After he returned from Iraq, Jeff had resumed his studies at Holyoke Community College, where he befriended Shaun Lamory, a fellow Belchertown High graduate recently discharged from the Air Force. ”We shared the same sentiments about the war,” says Lamory, 22. ”We were both against it.” Jeff planned to transfer to the University of Massachusetts in the fall and talked, in the last months of his life, of switching his major from business to nursing. ”He told me he had been involved in taking lives long enough,” Lamory says. ”He wanted to do something that would make him sleep better at night.”

Jeff once asked Lamory to join him for a cigarette. ”When he was telling me that story about the dead child, he was drinking wine out of an empty Jack Daniel’s bottle,” Lamory says. ”He said he drinks in solitude in his room and stares at the flag and thinks of that child.”

Jeff had been deteriorating since March, when he complained of being easily startled. ”He said when somebody slammed a door in the hall he would drop his books and crouch down real quick,” says Joyce, who worked as a nurse. ”He was very embarrassed.” By April, he skipped classes. He didn’t take his final exams.

Yet Jeff resisted suggestions that he seek help. He feared the VA would tell the Marines his problems and worried he’d have trouble getting a job if he was labeled with post-traumatic stress disorder. His drinking worsened. ”We didn’t want to take away his ‘medicine’ until he got help,” Kevin says.

Finally, in May, Jeff started seeing a private therapist, who diagnosed him with PTSD.

Jeff frightened his family, telling Debra in May he’d chosen a rope and a tree — probably a favorite maple with a rope swing. ”I would never do it,” Debra says he reassured her, ”because it would hurt Mom and Dad.” Walking with his mother one sunny day, he handed her his headphones and asked her to listen. What Joyce heard alarmed her. ”I’m staring down the barrel of a 45, swimming through the ashes of another life,” went the lyrics to ”45″ by Shinedown.

“He said, ‘Don’t take it that way. I don’t think of it as looking down a .45. I look at it as a dark tunnel,’ ” Joyce says. ”When you think about it, it’s the same thing — no light.”

By late May, Jeff had so deteriorated that his family, assured his medical records would be private, took him to the Northampton VA Medical Center. He expressed enough suicidal tendencies — talking, according to progress notes his family shares, of overdosing or hanging himself — that he was admitted for three days. He refused to stay longer. ”He felt like he was a prisoner,” Kevin says.

Jeff was told, his family says, that the VA couldn’t treat the PTSD until he quit drinking, in contrast to what they have since learned from the National Center for Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder website (www.ncptsd.org), which recommends treating PTSD and alcohol abuse simultaneously. VA officials won’t comment on Jeff’s case, but Dr. Gonzalo Vera, a psychiatrist at the Northampton hospital, says most medications used to treat PTSD don’t mix with alcohol. ”PTSD,” he says, ”is not something you can really treat with somebody who’s drinking, because it takes a lot of insight.”

On June 5, Jeff arrived drunk at his sister’s graduation from Holyoke Community College. With difficulty, his family persuaded him to return to the VA medical center. This time, however, Jeff voiced no suicidal thoughts. He was not admitted.

Jeff kept a flashlight by his bed because he imagined he heard the camel spiders he’d hated in Iraq. Once, after his parents disabled his car, he climbed out his window, dressed in fatigues, and persuaded neighbors to drive him to the liquor store. His father smashed the bottles of beer he bought there.

His relationship with his girlfriend became so difficult that they separated. ”I was really upset and frustrated,” Proulx tells PBS’s ”Frontline” in a documentary airing tonight. (She declined to be interviewed for this story.) ”We were kind of taking some space because it was, it was hard for me.”

On June 14, Jeff, sober and crying, sat on the living room floor. ”He said, ‘I don’t know why I’m feeling like this. I feel like I’m going crazy,’ ” Kevin recalls. ”We jumped on that. We said, ‘Do you want help?’ ” His mother immediately telephoned the VA and the Veterans Center and told them, ”My son is slowly dying.” Jeff called the Veterans Center himself and went to one appointment.

The night before he died, Jeff climbed into his father’s lap, and his father held him. ”I really felt awkward, but he was hurting so much,” Kevin says. ”I’m so glad I did, because the next time I held him I was getting the hose from around his neck.”

Kevin came home the next evening to find the TV on and the Iraqi dog tags on his son’s bed. The basement door was open. Kevin walked downstairs. He saw Jeff’s platoon picture on the floor and his battalion coin, and, finally, Jeff.

“He really looked peaceful. I put my knee underneath him. I was howling his name,” Kevin says. ”I got the hose off of him and I held him. I remembered the night before I’d held him. He was cold, and I started rubbing him. I folded up the rug for a pillow for him. I laid him down.”

At the Marine center overlooking New Haven Harbor, in a monthly drill much like the ones Jeff attended through last May, reservists check a row of trucks. ”You definitely come back different,” says Lance Corporal Robert Hoyt, a 21-year-old truck driver from Norwalk, Conn. ”When you come here everyone knows what you’ve been through.”

About half the unit is back in Iraq now. Some who returned with Jeff sought help themselves after his death.

“The drill month before he committed suicide I shared a tent with him. We would confide our problems. I knew he had a problem. He wouldn’t seek help,” says Samen, 23, a security guard from North Haven, Conn. ”He didn’t feel right around people. He just didn’t fit in. Everybody loved the guy. You won’t find a person here who has a bad thing to say about him.” In August 2003, Jeff had been a groomsman in Samen’s wedding.

“I really wish I took him somewhere to get help,” Samen says. ”I won’t let that happen again.”

Since Jeff’s death, Holyoke Community College has convened a meeting of other colleges to talk about veterans’ issues, and local therapists have started to meet about post-traumatic stress disorder. The Luceys donated a pair of Jeff’s boots and one of his uniforms to Eyes Wide Open, the American Friends Service Committee’s traveling exhibit displaying a pair of military boots for each American soldier killed in Iraq. Jeff’s, Debra says, are ”for the ones who come back with their souls dead.” On March 18, which would have been Jeff’s 24th birthday, his parents will arrive in North Carolina for a rally by the antiwar group Military Families Speak Out.

“We don’t want people to make the same mistakes we did,” Kevin says.

“We focused too much on the drinking and not what caused it. We weren’t aggressive enough,” Joyce says. ”You have this false feeling of hope when he’s having a good day.”

By Memorial Day, Jeff’s grave will have a tombstone bearing an epitaph from the Shinedown song he listened to again and again: ”What ever happened to the young man’s heart/ Swallowed by pain, as he slowly fell apart.”

June 20, 2008 – In an opening statement Friday morning before former White House press secretary Scott McClellan’s highly anticipated testimony in front of the House Judiciary Committee, the panel’s Democratic Chairman, John Conyers, said the Bush administration may have committed an an “impeachable offense” by launching a “propaganda campaign” to win support for a U.S. led invasion of Iraq in March 2003.

The Judiciary Committee is receiving testimony from McClellan about whether White House officials, including President Bush and Vice President Cheney, obstructed justice or broke other federal laws in an attempt to cover-up the roles of senior administration officials who unmasked covert CIA operate Valerie Plame’s identity to the media. McClellan published a book, What Happened: Inside the Bush White House and the Culture of Washington Deception, earlier this month that suggested Bush and Cheney played a bigger role in the scandal than they have publicly acknowledged.

Additionally, McClellan wrote that the White House mislead the public about Iraq’s arsenal of chemical and biological weapons and the threat the country posed to the U.S.

Conyers’ opening statement prior to the start of the hearing signaled that he may be inclined to consider a vote on the 35 articles of impeachment introduced against President Bush two weeks ago by his colleague, Ohio Congressman Dennis Kucinich. The House voted 251-166 to send the impeachment articles to the Judiciary Committee for consideration.

“What Scott McClellan wrote in his new book about the administration’s propaganda campaign to promote and defend the occupation of Iraq was not a revelation,” Conyers’ opening statement says. “It was confirmation that the White House has played fast and loose with the truth in a time of war. Depending on how one reads the Constitution, that may or may not be an impeachable offense.”

Conyers did not elaborate on impeachment beyond what he said in his opening statement. A spokesman for Conyers did not return calls for comment. In the past, the Michigan congressman has said publicly that he did not support Democratic efforts to impeach President Bush. Last year, a resolution introduced by Kucinich to impeach Cheney died in Conyers’ committee.

Talk of impeachment, however, was not limited to Conyers’ opening statement. Several Democratic members of the Judiciary Committee, including Robert Wexler, and Sheila Jackson Lee, discussed the need for impeachment hearings based on revelations that McClellan made in his book.

Wexler and Jackson Lee’s comments lead Republican Congressman Dan Lungren to remark that the hearing was beginning to sound like “Kucinich light.” Lungren questioned whether McClellan’s motive in appearing before the committee was to make a case for impeaching President Bush.

“You didn’t come here believing that someone should be impeached did you?” Lungren asked McClellan. The former press secretary told Lungren that he did not support impeachment.

“I have listened to my colleagues refer to impeachment four different times and we have been told by the leadership that impeachment is off the table,” Lungren said, quoting Democratic Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi. “We’re not hear to bring up an impeachment resolution.”

In an interview with The Public Record Thursday, Kucinich said he was scheduled to meet with Conyers Thursday evening to discuss how the Judiciary Committee will deal with the impeachment articles he introduced. However, the former 2008 Democratic presidential candidate said he was unclear on what course of action Conyers would take in the weeks ahead with regard to the articles of impeachment. Kucinich has vowed that he would continue to reintroduce articles of impeachment against President Bush if the Judiciary Committee does not take up the matter within the next 30 days.

“I have informed the leadership of the House should they fail to hold hearings I would come back to the Congress in 30 days with even more articles,” Kucinich told The Public Record. “I may have to do this one or two more times before I get their attention.”

Kucinich said Congressional hearings, such as the one taking place in the Judiciary Committee with McClellan, “reduces Congress to a debating society” if lawmakers fail to hold the Executive Branch accountable for their alleged misdeeds.

“How many hearings do we need to have to establish that this administration has violated the Constitution,” Kucinich said. “There is a point at which you reduce congress to a debating society, which diminishes Congress’ oversight role. It sets a terrible precedent.”

Conyers certainly appears to be probing whether the new revelations about Bush and Cheney’s role in the Plame leak–an incident directly linked to to the exposure of the White House’s use of fraudulent prewar Iraq intelligence–amount to High Crimes and Misdemeanors.

In a letter sent June 5 to Attorney General Michael Mukasey, Conyers and Subcommittee Chairman Linda Sanchez, (D-Calif.), demanded the Justice Department turn over transcripts of Bush and Cheney’s interviews with CIA leak investigator Patrick Fitzgerald and other documents obtained by the special prosecutor during the course of his three-year investigation.

A June 13 letter written by Deputy Attorney General Keith Nelson in response to Conyers and Sanchez’s inquiry to the DOJ indicated that the lawmakers are trying to build a criminal case against the White House.

“Committee staff has indicated that in this newly-initiated inquiry, the Committee’s interest focuses on alleged White House attempts to cover up the involvement of White House officials in the leak and whether such attempts constitute an obstruction of justice or other violation of federal criminal law,” Nelson wrote.

Nelson refused to turn over the leak documents to the Judiciary Committee claiming the panel does not have “government-wide oversight jurisdiction and it does not have jurisdiction over the White House.”

While we appreciate that the Committee has oversight authority over the Department of Justice, we do not understand how the Committee’s jurisdiction could extend to the alleged conduct at the White House,” says Nelson’s letter to Conyers and Sanchez. “The executive branch has substantial confidentiality interests in these documents, which have been created and maintained by the Department but consist of White House information.”

“Additionally, we note that it is the responsibility of this Department to investigate possible violations of the criminal law, not the responsibility of any committee of Congress. Moreover, this theory of oversight jurisdiction would suggest that the Judiciary Committee could investigate allegations of this kind anywhere in the executive branch. We are not aware that the Committee has exercised this kind of jurisdiction in the past,” Nelson wrote.

Nelson’s response angered Conyers and Sanchez. They fired off a response to Nelson Wednesday that said they intended to subpoena the Justice Department “unless we receive a clear commitment to promptly produce these documents by next Tuesday, June 24.”

“There is absolutely no proper basis for this action… it’s patently absurd… and an affront to the entire Congress,” Conyers and Sanchez responded Wednesday in a letter to Nelson. “Both the rules and our previous oversight activity concerning the Fitzgerald investigation plainly encompass the current inquiry, and the notion that our oversight concerning criminal law enforcement should somehow stop at the gates of the White House has no proper basis.”

June 21, 2008 – The federal government has ordered a deserter from the U.S. Army to return to the United States by July 10. If he doesn’t leave voluntarily, the government will deport him.

Either way, Corey Glass, a former sergeant, would become the first Iraq war resister to be booted out of Canada – thereby setting a precedent for other U.S. war resisters who are seeking refuge in this country.

A majority of the House of Commons voted 137-110 two weeks ago in favour of a motion urging the government to refrain from ousting war resisters; about 100 of whom are believed to be in the Canada. All three opposition parties supported the measure, sponsored by the New Democrats’ Olivia Chow. The Conservatives dissented.

Yet the motion seems futile. Nothing obliges Prime Minister Stephen Harper to respect it – it’s non-binding. And while polls suggest that most Canadians support the resisters, as do such organizations as Amnesty International and the United Church of Canada, the issue is largely out of the public eye. This month’s parliamentary motion, for example, received scant news coverage.

This general apathy seems paradoxical. The Iraq war is, if anything, even more unpopular among Canadians than was the Vietnam war. Tens of thousands of U.S. draft dodgers and deserters fled to Canada during that conflict, and the government and the public received them well.

Why shouldn’t Canada be as open to resisters today as it was a generation ago? The political answer, of course, is that Harper is less willing to ruffle Washington’s feathers than were the prime ministers of the day, Lester Pearson and Pierre Trudeau.

The legal answer is that a well-founded fear of persecution is one of the base criteria for granting refugee status, and the Immigration and Refugee Board, the courts and Immigration Minister Diane Finley have all rejected the resisters’ claim that they would face persecution if they returned home. I agree with Finley and company. The U.S. military typically sentences Iraq war deserters (that is, those who have not left the country) to jail terms that run to about a year, and that’s hardly a harrowing fate.

Yet the weakness of the persecution argument doesn’t justify Canada’s rejection of the kind of people it once accepted. After all, the U.S. didn’t really persecute Vietnam war deserters either, and yet Canada gave them asylum.

Those who want to expel the resisters make two moral arguments. Let’s look at each.

The first argument is that volunteers make up 100 per cent of today’s U.S. armed forces, which wasn’t the case during ‘Nam. “Why,” the National Post’s Jonathan Kay asks in regard to Corey Glass, “should Canadians help this deserter go back on his freely given word?” That’s technically true: Guys like Glass signed army contracts of their free will. Yet they were deceived. The contractor – the U.S. government – assured them this was a just war. The premises – that Saddam had WMD and that he was in bed with Al-Qa’ida – turned out to be bogus.

Some deserters also claim, plausibly, that glib recruiters promised them non-combat jobs if they signed up with the army. Wrong. More false pretenses.

Finally, the army has called still others back into additional tours of Iraq under the Stop-loss program. That’s like a back-door draft.

Free will? Come on.

The second moral argument is that the resisters are unjustly claiming to be conscientious objectors. Real CO’s are against all wars, say the critics, and the resisters are against only this one war.

Yet to grant asylum only to those who are against all violent conflicts is to set the bar unreasonably high. Most soldiers don’t think in terms of absolutes. They think in terms of their own direct experiences.

In court testimony and interviews, those resisters who have served in Iraq suggest that the unjust war means there can be no excuse for the horrors they have seen. That’s a true show of conscience.

Critics of the resisters make one last argument, this one less moral than practical. They say that giving asylum would be bad for troop morale and thus undermine the U.S. war effort.

Think about that. If politicians knew that the citizenry would refuse to fight if the reason for a war was not persuasive, they might embark on fewer unjust wars – or, they might end such wars more quickly, as was the case with the Vietnam conflict.

There aren’t many checks and balances against military recklessness, but easy asylum can be one of them.

June 21, 2008 – Ten men who served in Vietnam with Sen. John Kerry want Dallas billionaire T. Boone Pickens to fork over the $1 million he said he would give anyone who could disprove claims that Swift Boat Veterans for Truth made about Mr. Kerry’s war record during the 2004 presidential campaign.

The men sent a lengthy letter and supporting documentation to Mr. Pickens on Thursday.

Mr. Pickens, who helped support the anti-Kerry group, could not be reached for comment Friday night. He has not publicly responded to the letter.

“We are prepared now to come to Texas to see you, or meet somewhere else mutually convenient,” the crewmen wrote. “We are telling you, that we will bring with us a Navy/Pentagon certified copy of Senator Kerry’s full military record and his writings and the movie footage you have requested. We will sit with you while you go through them page for page, frame by frame and answer any questions you may have. We know the truth because we were there on the boat. ”

The men want the money given to a veterans charity.

In 2004 Mr. Pickens gave at least $2 million to the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth. Its political ads questioning the military service of Mr. Kerry — who campaigned on his record as a war hero — were considered instrumental in his loss to President Bush.

President Bush won a narrow victory over Mr. Kerry, with many analysts contending the senator was late in responding to the swift boat ads.

Last November, Mr. Pickens offered to pay $1 million to anyone who could prove that the claims made against Mr. Kerry were wrong.

Mr. Kerry took the challenge and offered to debate Mr. Pickens in Dallas and Massachusetts.

June 20, 2008, Washington, DC – The House approved the largest war-spending bill to date Thursday, bending to President Bush’s call for $162 billion in war funding with no strings attached and giving his successor enough money to wage the wars until July 2009.

In exchange, Democrats won Bush’s blessing for several of their domestic priorities, including a 13-week extension of jobless benefits for workers who have exhausted theirs, and a new GI bill benefit allowing veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars to attend a state college tuition-free.

The deal, negotiated between the White House and allies of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-San Francisco, takes the issue of the war off Congress’ plate for the rest of this election year. Lawmakers also intended to give the next president some time to set a new Iraq policy before having to return to Congress for more money.

But anti-war activists called it a betrayal by Democrats, who had pledged to end the war. Rep. Barbara Lee, D-Oakland, dubbed it “the biggest blank check ever.” Rep. Lynn Woolsey, D-Petaluma, said the vote was a “profound disappointment to the millions of Americans who put Democrats into power hoping we could force a change in Iraq.”

The House vote is likely to end almost two years of clashes between Democrats and the White House over the Iraq war, which Bush and Republicans have largely won.

House Democrats this spring once against approved a nonbinding measure calling for the withdrawal of all U.S. troops by June 2009. But the Senate, unable to get the 60 votes needed to pass it, stripped it from the spending bill. The war bill ping-ponged between the House and Senate for weeks until Pelosi and other top Democrats decided to cut a deal.

“I don’t consider it a failure,” Pelosi told reporters Thursday. “We never sent them a bill that did not have deadlines, conditions and the rest.” She blamed Republicans in the Senate. “They are complicit with the president to make sure he never has to get a bill on his desk with a timeline, because the American people want a timeline,” she said.

The House passed the legislation by splitting it in two pieces to accommodate anti-war Democrats who refused to vote for any more war funding. The first piece, on the war funding, passed 268-155, with support from 188 Republicans and 80 Democrats. The second part, which included the domestic spending increases, was approved with strong backing from both parties, 416-12.

The bill now goes to the Senate, where Democratic leaders say it’s likely to be passed.

The deal required major concessions from both sides. Democrats were able to get the 13-week extension of jobless benefits, but had to drop their push for an additional 13 weeks of benefits for workers in high-unemployment states. Republicans also insisted that individuals must have worked for at least 20 weeks to qualify for the benefits.

The extended benefits will apply to all those who exhaust their aid between November 2006 and March 2009, an estimated 3.8 million workers nationwide.

The new education benefit for veterans, proposed by Sen. Jim Webb, D-Va., who served in the Marines, would offer any veteran who served active duty for at least three years since Sept. 11, 2001, a full college education – tuition, room, board and a monthly stipend covering the cost of the most expensive in-state public university. It would more than double the value of the current GI Bill education benefit from $40,000 to $90,000.

Bush had threatened to veto the proposal, saying it was too generous and could entice too many soldiers serving in Iraq or Afghanistan to leave the military. But the White House backed down after Democrats dropped a plan to pay for the benefit by raising taxes on individuals who earn at least $500,000 a year and couples who earn $1 million.

But the White House ended up adding at least $10 billion to the $52 billion price tag for the new benefit over 10 years by insisting that veterans be allowed to transfer the college education benefit to a family member.

The fiscally conservative House Blue Dog Democrats, who pushed for the tax hike to pay for the veterans’ benefit, expressed frustration that the war spending and the new GI bill benefit will be added to the growing national debt.

“We are making a serious mistake by not paying for these things,” said Rep. Allen Boyd, D-Fla., a Blue Dog member. “It is one our children and grandchildren will pay for.”

But House Minority Leader John Boehner, R-Ohio, who helped broker the deal, insisted that the spending for the war and for veterans’ benefits was worth it. “The cost of this bill, frankly, is high, but it’s a price of freedom. And I don’t think you put a price on freedom and security in our country,” he said.

Democrats succeeded in keeping language in the bill postponing six Medicaid rules proposed by the Bush administration, which critics say would have led to cuts in services to seniors, families and the disabled.

The bill also would bar the United States from spending more money on the reconstruction of Iraq unless the Iraqi government matches it dollar for dollar. And it would ban the use of military construction funds to build permanent bases in Iraq.

Anti-war groups delivered “certificates of shame” and cardboard cutout “bloody hands” to Pelosi and other House leaders before the vote.

“We really feel that they have betrayed the American people who voted for them to get us out of this war,” said Medea Benjamin, co-founder of the anti-war group CodePink, based in San Francisco.

Pelosi gave a fiery anti-war speech Thursday night, but also expressed her disappointment that the bill will continue to fund Bush’s Iraq policy. “Let us think and hope that this is the last time there will ever be another dollar spent without constraints, without conditions, without direction,” she said.

How they voted
To see how members voted on the war spending bill:

clerk.house.gov/evs/2008/roll431.xml

What’s next
The war spending bill now goes to the Senate, where it’s likely to be passed.

It would then go to President Bush, who has indicated he will sign the bill.

June 19, 2008 – Iraq’s oil ministry says the country is close to signing oil service agreements with major international oil companies to boost its output capacity.

Once these Technical Support Agreements are signed, they will be the first major contracts which Iraq has undertaken with the majors since the 2003 US-led invasion to Iraq toppled Saddam Hussein’s regime.

Ministry spokesman Assem Jihad told The Associated Press in a telephonic interview on Thursday that the companies are submitting their proposals which will be reviewed and sent to the Iraqi Cabinet for final approval.

Jihad said the names of the companies would be announced June 30.