“I think he was killed. I honestly do. I think he was murdered"

[kpete]

A Death Reconsidered
Was Col. Ted Westhusing's death in Iraq something more sinister than suicide?
Robert Bryce | February 08, 2008

..........I talked to a source in the Department of Defense who met Westhusing in Iraq about three months before his death. The source, who asked not to be identified for fear of reprisals, was investigating claims of wrongdoing against military contractors working in Iraq. After a short introduction, I asked him what he thought had happened to Westhusing. “I think he was killed. I honestly do. I think he was murdered,” the source told me. “Maybe DOD didn’t have enough evidence to call it murder, so they called it suicide.” I contacted the source through Larry C. Johnson, a former employee of the CIA who specializes in terrorism and security issues, and who writes the “No Quarter USA” blog. Johnson and other bloggers have written extensively about Westhusing’s death.

............................

Aside from his pedigree, Westhusing was also close to the seat of power. When he was in Iraq, Westhusing worked for one of the most famous generals in the U.S. military, David Petraeus, who at the time was head of the Multi-National Security Transition Command–Iraq. Petraeus has since gained another star on his uniform (he now has four) and has become the commander of all U.S. forces in Iraq.

.............................

Perhaps the most confounding element of the Westhusing story is the letter that Westhusing wrote to Maj. Gen. Fil on May 28, 2005, officially absolving a key contractor of alleged wrongdoing. One of Westhusing’s primary duties was overseeing contractors from Virginia-based U.S. Investigations Services, a private security company with contracts worth $79 million to help train Iraqi police units that were conducting special operations. (The owners of USIS include the Carlyle Group, the private equity firm whose investors formerly included former President George H.W. Bush and former Secretary of State James A. Baker III.) A few days before he penned the May 28 letter, Westhusing had received an anonymous letter claiming USIS was cheating the military, that several hundred weapons assigned to the counterterrorism training program had disappeared, and that a number of radios, each costing $4,000, had vanished. The anonymous letter concluded that USIS was “not providing what you are paying for” and that the entire training operation was “a total failure.”

.......................

The note found next to his body, which his mother refuses to accept as a suicide note, includes this line: “I didn’t volunteer to support corrupt, money grubbing contractors ...”

...........................

more at:
http://www.texasobserver.org/article.php?aid=2682

[MasonJar]

1. His death stinks to high heaven. I hope there is a hell for these evil doers to spend eternity in.

[Disturbed]

3. I am certain that the DOD will not investigate this man's death

any further.

[UpInArms]

2. background - with imbedded links worth reading here:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/rj-eskow/an-american-death-col-_b_11373.html

The apparent suicide of Col. Ted Westhusing, as reported in the Los Angeles Times, resonates with loss, tragedy, and meaning. He was a professional ethicist, specializing in the concept of a soldier's honor, who was assigned to supervise a civilian military contractor in Iraq. Col. Westhusing saw everything he believed in trashed by civilian leadership that understood neither ethics nor honor, under a Republican government that disrespects and mistreats its military. Sound like a facile interpretation? Then listen to the facts.

Westhusing, reports the Times, "was one of the Army's leading scholars of military ethics ... His dissertation (for a Ph.D. in philosophy) was an extended meditation on the meaning of honor." Once in Iraq, Westhusing received an anonymous complaint that the contractor he oversaw, USIS, had been cheating the government - and that it concealed gross human rights violations to protect its contracts.

Writes the Times:

"In e-mails to his family, Westhusing seemed especially upset by one conclusion he had reached: that traditional military values such as duty, honor and country had been replaced by profit motives in Iraq, where the U.S. had come to rely heavily on contractors for jobs once done by the military."

But then, it comes from the top, doesn't it? Dick Cheney still holds that infamous Halliburton stock, and the scandal-plague contractor still pays him a six-figure income. Halliburton employees have been found guilty of fraud in Iraq, fraud investigations against the company itself are ongoing, waste and mismanagement are rampant -- and meanwhile Cheney challenges others ... on ethics. Irony is not supposed to be a great soldier's strong suit.

Col. Westhusing's devotion to the military and its mission seemingly had no place in the Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld Pentagon. In fact, a military psychologist made his ethical stature and devotion to honor sound like a mental disorder. "Despite his intelligence, his ability to grasp the idea that profit is an important goal for people in the private sector was surprisingly limited," wrote Lt. Col. Lisa Breitenbach, reducing a lifetime of integrity to a clinical dysfunction. Shades of the USSR ...

And yet ... no wonder Lt. Col. Breitenbach saw Col. Westhusing's values as a medical condition. His commitment to completing the mission - to serving the country over making a profit -shows a notable detachment from the reality that is today's Pentagon. Sen. Patrick Leahy's attempts to pass a law preventing excess corporate war profiteering and fraud has been blocked by Republicans for several years now - with the aid and support of Sen. McCain and the other "mavericks" in the GOP.

...more...

[defendandprotect]

12. American government has been ruined by political violence and theft

ofelections that have occurred -- openly -- over the past 50 years and more ---

JFK 1963 --

and electronic voting machines began to be used in the mid-1960's . . .

Watergate ---

and heaven only knows how many political murders ---

These military "suicides" have also been going on for decades ---
seemingly to do also with drug smuggling/involvement in the military.

[rosetta627]

15. You certainly have good vision defendandprotect

You see the November 22, 1963 assassination as the coup it was.

Once people recognize that fact, the events of today become clear and the continuum becomes obvious.

For example Halliburton, the mega war profiteers, started out as a small company in Texas named Brown & Root, with one asset: significant stock in a very ambitious and unscrupulous politician named Lyndon Johnson. On November 23, 1963 LBJ issued National Security Action Memorandum #273, which reversed President Kennedy's order within NSAM #263 which (in conjunction with the McNamarra/Taylor report) ended the Vietnam "conflict" and ordered all US personnel home. This hugely benefited LBJ's financial backers Brown & Root.

This was done less than 24 hours after President Kennedy was murdered. Clearly, it was the highest priority for the new "government."

"Johnson had symbiotic relationship with Brown & Root occurred before campaign finance laws required candidates to reveal the sources of their funding. Indeed, by Johnson's own admission, according to his biographer Ronnie Dugger, much of the money he got from Brown & Root came in cash. In return, Johnson steered lucrative federal contracts to the company. Those contracts helped Brown & Root become a global construction powerhouse that today employs 20,000 people and operates in more than 100 countries."
http://weeklywire.com/ww/08-28-00/austin_pols_feature2.html

"After Johnson took over the Oval Office, Brown & Root won contracts for huge construction projects for the federal government. By the mid-1960s, newspaper columnists and the Republican minority in Congress began to suggest that the company's good luck was tied to its sizable contributions to Johnson's political campaign.

More questions were raised when a consortium of which Brown & Root was a part won a $380 million contract to build airports, bases, hospitals and other facilities for the U.S. Navy in South Vietnam. By 1967, the General Accounting Office had faulted the "Vietnam builders" -- as they were known -- for massive accounting lapses and allowing thefts of materials.

Brown & Root also became a target for anti-war protesters: they called the firm the embodiment of the "military-industrial complex" and denounced it for building detention cells to hold Viet Cong prisoners in South Vietnam.

Today, Brown & Root is called Kellogg, Brown & Root -- a Halliburton subsidiary better known as KBR."

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=1569483

Again, once people recognize the coup of 1963 for what it was, the events of today become clear, and the continuum becomes obvious.

[Octafish]

16. A most hearty welcome to DU, rosetta627!

You are spot-on regarding 22 November 1963.

If DU may add a bit more on the subject:

Poppy Bush brought up JFK Assassination and "Conspiracy Theorists" at Ford Funeral

The memos are particularly interesting.

[rosetta627]

18. Oh Octafish, there is no one I'd rather be welcomed by

You are no stranger to me.
I've read your posts for years.
Thank you for carrying the torch.

When Poppy Bush used the occasion of (Warren Omission member) Ford's funeral to attack us, it underscored the ongoing importance of understanding what really occurred on November 22, 1963, and how directly it relates to today.

I'll go read the memos at your link now.
Thanks again my friend.

[wolfgangmo]

19. And let's not forget ...

... the completely suspicious death of Senator Paul Wellstone of Minnesota - a true populist maverick. He is missed in the north woods, I can tell you.

[Kurovski]

4. K&R. (nt)

[Octafish]

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

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

Almost a thousand members of America's armed forces have died since Col. Westhusing.

We don't have a number of Iraqi civilians killed as Bush's Pentagon won't report on the human toll they call "collateral damage."

[Orwellian_Ghost]

6. K&R n/t

[donheld]

7. K & R

It's too bad all the BS from GDP crowds out the posts like this one.

[TacticalPeek]

8. K & R

:kick:

[Imagevision]

9. Can't begin to fathom the wheeling & dealing going on over there, they misplaced 9 billion in cash a

couple of years ago and the M$M looked the other way on that story as well. Iraq the greatest cash cow on the planet as americans get booted from their houses and screwed buying gas to get to work...

[Twist_U_Up]

10. Surprising amount of Journalists,Scientist and Dissenters too

and the ants go marching on 2 by 2 hurrah hurrah
K+R

[jazzjunkysue]

11. Alot of people get suicided in the Bush/Nixon administrations.

There's just too many statistically to be feasible.

[navarth]

13. k/r

[Mithreal]

14. K&R

Too many suspicious suicides. Called my Congressman and Senators about Westhusing and other suspicious deaths in the past and have received no responses, will continue to call. Westhusing's story is the most compelling but in no way alone. People who obstruct crimes and investigate fraud and theft in Iraq are dieing.

[lovuian]

17. A truly brave man outed by Mafia

Karma will catch up with them
to kill for money is the worst

[blm]

20. Thank you. I have believed a murder occurred since I first read about his death.

.

[bdamomma]

21. Was this the guy who supposed to testify in front of a congressional committee

about a year ago, and he did not show up?

[bluesmail]

22. oh shit, Carlyle Group, K & R

What a busy group they are.

[mod mom]

23. this reminds me of Pat Tillman. Remember his brother's tribute to him:

After Pat’s Birthday

By Kevin Tillman

Originally posted on 10/19/06

Editor’s note: Kevin Tillman joined the Army with his brother Pat in 2002, and they served together in Iraq and Afghanistan. Pat was killed in Afghanistan on April 22, 2004. Kevin, who was discharged in 2005, has written a powerful, must-read document.



It is Pat’s birthday on Nov. 6, and elections are the day after. It gets me thinking about a conversation I had with Pat before we joined the military. He spoke about the risks with signing the papers. How once we committed, we were at the mercy of the American leadership and the American people. How we could be thrown in a direction not of our volition. How fighting as a soldier would leave us without a voice ... until we got out.

Much has happened since we handed over our voice:


Somehow we were sent to invade a nation because it was a direct threat to the American people, or to the world, or harbored terrorists, or was involved in the Sept. 11 attacks, or received weapons-grade uranium from Niger, or had mobile weapons labs, or WMD, or had a need to be liberated, or we needed to establish a democracy, or stop an insurgency, or stop a civil war we created that can’t be called a civil war even though it is. Something like that.

Somehow our elected leaders were subverting international law and humanity by setting up secret prisons around the world, secretly kidnapping people, secretly holding them indefinitely, secretly not charging them with anything, secretly torturing them. Somehow that overt policy of torture became the fault of a few “bad apples” in the military.

Somehow back at home, support for the soldiers meant having a 5-year-old kindergartener scribble a picture with crayons and send it overseas, or slapping stickers on cars, or lobbying Congress for an extra pad in a helmet. It’s interesting that a soldier on his third or fourth tour should care about a drawing from a 5-year-old; or a faded sticker on a car as his friends die around him; or an extra pad in a helmet, as if it will protect him when an IED throws his vehicle 50 feet into the air as his body comes apart and his skin melts to the seat.

-snip
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20070527_tillman_and_kovic_on_war_and_sacrifice/

[99th_Monkey]

24. I've been blogging and posting on Col. Westhusing for years .. .damn.. rec'd

The LA Times was about the only major media to even report on it in any depth, and then it just fell down the Memory Hole

so glad to see people re-examining his case. This man's family KNOWS he didn't commit suicide. He was a man of high character,
and a loyal American soldier trying to what he was assigned to do (i.e. investigate corruption) and was "suicided" for having
the integrity to call a spade a spade.

By the way, the fact that Gen. Betrayus was his supervisor should tell us something too.

I hope a full investigation is reopened on his case.

[me b zola]

25. K&R

[bonito]

26. K&R

[fascisthunter]

27. I Know Someone Who Lost Their Sister to a Murder in Afghanistan

She told family members that if anything happened to her, it was because of something she witnessed that wasn't supposed to be seen by the likes of her.

Our government is extremely corrupt.