|
Edited on Thu Jun-28-07 08:09 PM by ShortnFiery
Oh wait! We can't :( - Col. Westhusing committed suicide and left this note for this OUTSTANDING supervisor:
At about 1:15 in the afternoon, Westhusing was discovered in trailer 602A. Near his body was a note addressed to his commanders, Petraeus and Fil. Written in large, block letters, it read:
Thanks for telling me it was a good day until I briefed you. —You are only interested in your career and provide no support to your staff—no msn support and you don’t care. I cannot support a msn that leads to corruption, human right 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. 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 . You are not what you think you are and I know it.
COL Ted Westhusing
Life needs trust. Trust is no more for me here in Iraq.
snip
That fact is evident in a two-inch stack of documents, obtained over the past 15 months under the Freedom of Information Act, that provides many details of Westhusing’s suicide. The pile includes interviews with Westhusing’s co-workers, diagrams of his sleeping quarters, interviews with his family members, and partially redacted reports from the Army’s Criminal Investigation Command and Inspector General. The documents echo the story told by Westhusing’s friends. “Something he saw drove him to this,” one Army officer who was close to Westhusing said in an interview. “The sum of what he saw going on drove him” to take his own life. “It’s because he believed in duty, honor, country that he’s dead.”
Westhusing worked under the supervision of two army generals: Joseph Fil, a major general (two stars) and Petraeus, a lieutenant general (three stars). Petraeus was impressed with Westhusing. By 2005, Petraeus had become a darling of the U.S. media thanks, in part, to his success in helping stabilize and rebuild northern Iraq. Petraeus liked what he saw in Westhusing and promoted him from lieutenant colonel to full colonel. In a March 2005 e-mail, Petraeus told Westhusing that he had “already exceeded the very lofty expectations that all had for you.”
While the promotion was important, Westhusing was increasingly isolated. He did not have, as his fellow officer from West Point put it, a “battle buddy,” a person who “looks out for his friend both physically and psychologically.” The lack of personal support began to wear on Westhusing. His friends in the U.S. began seeing his mood darken. His e-mails became less frequent and more ominous. Westhusing began having increasingly contentious conflicts with the contractors from USIS. There were ongoing problems with USIS’s expenses, and Westhusing was forced to deal with allegations that USIS had seen or participated in the killing of Iraqis. He received an anonymous letter claiming USIS was cheating the military at every opportunity, that several hundred weapons assigned to the counterterrorism training program had disappeared, and that a number of radios, each of which cost $4,000, had also disappeared. The letter concluded that USIS was “not providing what you are paying for” and that the entire training operation was “a total failure.”
/snip
For the life of me, I don't know why Senator Reid seemingly goes "Ga Ga" over General Peaches? Generals put on their pants the same as any other human being. I've interacted with over two dozen General Officers in my lifetime (I conducted our Station Briefing out of Protocol) and IMO, only two came across to me as genuinely stand out as caring for their troops when you strip away all the political fluff of "the position."
No, don't let yourself be WOWed by General Peaches and BTW, General Ret. Anthony Zinni would make a much better Diplomat than Tony Blair ... but alas, The Quartet reigns supreme. :(
|
Printer-friendly format
Email this thread to a friend
Bookmark this thread
(1000+ posts)
Send PM |
Profile |
Ignore
