Justice for Westhusing

[Octafish]

James Risen wrote about a death threat made by Blackwater's main man in Iraq upon an official from the State Department sent to investigate contractor corruption. Upon hearing that news, and before I could think of what that really meant or anything else, I thought of Col. Theodore S. Westhusing, United States Army.



Col. Westhusing was in charge of training the new Iraqi army and overseeing civilian contractors. He is remembered as a good man, a brilliant man who followed the Cadet Code: "I will not lie, cheat, or steal, or tolerate those who do.” As an instructor at West Point, the PhD colonel served as the Army's chief ethicist. So, as an honest officer in Iraq, he came to suspect something was very wrong with the conduct of some of the private military contractors in the employ of USIS. Unfortunately, before he revealed those suspicions, and just a few weeks before he was scheduled to return home to his loving wife and family, he became a suicide.

The subject was discussed on DU. One thread from 2007:

Know your BFEE: They kill good soldiers like Col. Ted Westhusing for profit...


Another from 2012, when Petraeus ran into some conduct unbecoming problems at CIA:

Is David Petraeus Dirty? Ted Westhusing Said So, and Then He Shot Himself.


Which brings me back to hearing the report of Blackwater's top manager in Iraq. Imagine the gall of the son of a bitch! To threaten the life of a U.S. citizen sent on official government business -- the People's business -- to see how our money was being spent, or in the case of the Iraq War, stolen. It seems some groups, such as the private military contractors, join their employers in Washington in thinking that they really are above the law. They certainly behave that way.

Could there be any connection between Blackwater and USIS, the once-public then privatized public employee background check organization now turned military contractor in Iraq? Of course, there are. Both are BFEE-connected for-profit outfits that are making enormous fortunes from the Iraq War.

Blackwater was owned and operated largely by one Erik Prince, darling of America's hard right and Michigan's right to inherit wealth beyond imagination class. His sister is a GOP kingmaker, including his brother in law, the once unsuccessful GOP candidate for Michigan governor. Petraeus and CIA were so enamored of the talents and abilities of Mr. Prince, CIA outsourced drone targeting to his firm.

At the time of Col. Westhusing's death, USIS was owned and operated largely by Carlyle Group, a private investment bank known for finding, buying, and flipping defense-related companies at a nice profit. They literally and figuratively are good friends and actual employers of George W Bush, his father, George H.W. Bush, Sec. of State James Baker, Sec. of Defense Frank Carlucci, Prime Minister John Major of the UK and other government insiders and players connected to the grand ol' oily chess board.

In short, both USIS and Blackwater are controlled by the "money trumps peace" crowd, the cronies and family of George W Bush. What Bartcop termed the BFEE for Bush Family Evil Empire, or what I call the War Party for short, follow the philosophy that the United States can be defended at a handsome profit and, if you apply enough media spin, quite patriotically.



As for Col. Westhusing: He, according to one officer under his command, at first very much believed in his mission. Why? Because the same BFEE liars who lied America into war also lied the good men and women at West Point and at the Pentagon into war. Until he got to Iraq and saw with his own eyes and heard with his own ears, he never thought "money would trump peace."

An Army psychologist concluded that Westhusing struggled with the idea that “monetary values could outweigh moral ones in war.” This, she said, was a flaw. -- Westhusing's Flaw

Of course, the only "flaw" was in being a highly ethical person, one who would NOT "go along to get along." In short, Col. Westhusing was a man of integrity. He was the kind who stand in the way of the warmongers and war profiteers. Until the politicians who lied him and America into war are brought to justice, we just won't know how much he became their victim.

[KG]

1. nothing good could come from an enterprise built on lies and deceit such the iraq war. and

nothing has. NOTHING.

[Octafish]

2. That goes back to Gulf War I.

Nothing good could come from war and the lies needed to sell it. Courtesy of Hill & Knowlton:

The Kuwait ambassador's daughter, testifying to the US Congress she was a nurse at a Kuwaiti City hospital who saw the Iraqi soldiers take babies from their incubators and leave them on the cold, hard floor so they could steal the incubators for Baghdad.



"If I wanted to lie, or if we wanted to lie, if we wanted to exaggerate, I wouldn't use my daughter to do so. I could easily buy other people to do it." -- Kuwait Ambassador

[johnnyreb]

3. Your 2007 'Know Your BFEE' thread taught me of Col. Westhusing.

I had never heard of him before or since. I have remembered his name and conveyed his story to others. Thanks Octafish!

Money Trumps Peace (the song)
http://209.237.163.44/music/moneytrumpspeace.m4a

[Octafish]

4. Capt. Alex Limkin wrote to his lost CO...

Letter to a Dead Colonel

By Alex E. Limkin

My commander’s suicide note to General Fil and General Petraeus as obtained through the Freedom of Information Act following my tour of duty in Iraq:

I cannot support a msn [mission] that leads to corruption, human rights abuses and liars. I am sullied—no more. I didn’t volunteer to support corrupt, money grubbing contractors, nor work for commanders only interested in themselves. I came to serve honorably and feel dishonored. I trust no Iraqi. I cannot live this way. All my love to my family, my wife and my precious children. I love you and trust you only. Death before being dishonored any more. Trust is essential. I don’t know who trust anymore. (sic) Why serve when you cannot accomplish the mission, when you no longer believe in the cause, when your every effort and breath to succeed meets with lies, lack of support, and selfishness? No more. Reevaluate yourselves, cdrs [commanders]. You are not what you think you are and I know it.

COL Ted Westhusing

EXCERPT...

I’ve learned something about you since getting back, that you were too good for the lousy lot of scoundrels that you got thrown in there with. Too good for that lousy war. And I’m including myself alongside the other piglets that turned a blind eye to the bilking of American taxpayer money that took place there every dirty second of every dirty minute of every dirty day of that dirty war, right up until June 5, 2005, when you said No mas and put a bullet in your head.

False invoices, false statistics, false training programs, false reports. Calculated, manufactured lies to generate war profit! And not just for a few hundred dollars or few thousand dollars, but to the tune of millions upon millions! Dollars that Americans labored to earn, then entrusted to their government to spend wisely. Hah! You must have been truly sickened, then outraged, at the shameless dishonesty among the “money grubbing” contractors you were forced to work with. Flannery O’Connor’s bible salesman all grown up, am I right? Slowly killing you with their sleaze and immorality. What the hell were these bastards doing in a war zone, anyway, filling their dirty sacks with money, on hallowed ground where better men than they--fighting men, Rangers (like you and me!)--were dutifully serving? The thought of those bastards in their pressed jeans flying to Dubai to deposit their bundles of shrink-wrapped cash and go jet skiing makes me sick to my stomach. Really sick.

SNIP...

And the horrible part of it was that you were surrounded by shysters and conmen in the biggest thing that you had ever been a part of. And they were all lying to you, lying to your face, making a mockery of your West Point ethos of Duty, Honor, Country. And those shysters and conmen, those war profiteers, they were laughing at your simpleminded devotion all the way to the bank. And when you went topside with reports of corruption and fabrication of training achievements, no one wanted to hear it. No one wanted to hear about the rampant failure of our mission in Iraq, about all the wasted billions of mismanaged money. Don’t rock the apple cart, Colonel. This is Iraq, Land of Bedevilment. Rivers flow upstream, then downstream, then stand still, brown and murky, then disgorge plump, bloated bodies to sharp-beaked egrets for a good, sturdy pecking. It’s the heat. Addles the brain. Don’t think on anything too much. Just do your time and get out of the sandbox.

CONTINUED...

http://alibi.com/feature/22554/Letter-to-a-Dead-Colonel.html

PS: One whale of a writer. One heck of a guy.

PPS: Thank you, johnnyreb, for the heads-up to the song. I am bookmarking to listen to on a modern machine.

[johnnyreb]

5. Many thanks to Capt. Limkin

People of conscience give us strength and hope.

It is so hard to read this saga again. How you keep it up Octafish, astonishes me. The fiscally-responsible godly war-supporters want the war-to-end-all-staged-terra'ism to be old news already: "Yes we called you traitor, yes we were suckered into creating huge government to wage global war fought by your kids in the name of the Prince of Peace, yes we lost the war and the treasury thereby emboldening terrorists, increasing taxes, increasing poverty and thus abortions, but how 'bout that damn liberal meals-on-wheels program!" Argh, so much to read, but I have dvds to burn and spread.

[Octafish]

7. Thank you, johnnyreb.

Spreading the truth is exactly what democracy needs. That's why DU is so important.

The subjects of this thread -- and much of what is done by the secret government of warmongers and war profiteers -- are so disgusting and maddening that the only real relief I get is that it is making a difference, even if small or unnoticed by the majority. by raising awareness. For even if there only are two of us who know, democracy lives.

[hootinholler]

6. Hope remains that there will be justice for many

There is no statute of limitations on war crimes or murder.

[Octafish]

8. Many traitors, war criminals, murderers and war profiteers await Justice.

From DemocracyNow!:

Richard Clarke, the nation’s former top counterterrorism official, tells Democracy Now! he believes President George W. Bush is guilty of war crimes for launching the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Clarke served as national coordinator for security and counterterrorism during Bush’s first year in office. He resigned in 2003 following the Iraq invasion and later made headlines by accusing Bush officials of ignoring pre-9/11 warnings about an imminent attack by al-Qaeda. "I think things that they authorized probably fall within the area of war crimes," Clarke says. "Whether that would be productive or not, I think, is a discussion we could all have. But we have established procedures now with the International Criminal Court in The Hague, where people who take actions as serving presidents or prime ministers of countries have been indicted and have been tried. So the precedent is there to do that sort of thing. And I think we need to ask ourselves whether or not it would be useful to do that in the case of members of the Bush administration. It’s clear that things that the Bush administration did — in my mind, at least — were war crimes."

[RobertEarl]

9. Money trumps peace

I can only hope that one day soon enough DU types quit bashing each other and go after the real enemies.

The clouds of petty angst do nothing more than cover up real crimes like our Colonel being murdered by the money trumps peace crowd.

[Octafish]

10. John Kokal was a State Department officer who knew something was wrong with war on Iraq...

He ended up dead from a fall the top of the State Department, reportedly just after voicing his reasons to his superiors. Another "suicide" whose sudden, if convenient, passing made it easier for the warmongers and war profiteers to make another killing on yet another day. As it was never covered in the national press, Mr. Kokal's story is now largely forgotten.