http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-
colonel27nov27,0,6096413,full.story

Col. Ted Westhusing, a military ethicist who volunteered to go to
Iraq, was upset by what he saw.

His apparent suicide raises questions.
Comments from Kos:

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2005/11/27/172747/10

Theres more where that came from. And even worse. Visually, in video,
it really hits. Hard. And hurts.

If you want visual evidence of war crimes I have dug up all kinds of
material here.

http://www.chris-floyd.com/...

==Video is up. I have it up here in Macromedia Flash 8 and
downloadable as a wmv - this is the correct url
Thank you for posting this wretched video

There is no way this video was faked.
It is authentic.
It is horrible.
It shows machine gunners murdering motorists by shooting drivers
through their windshields.

Please make it stop. Please hold George Bush accountable. Please
bring our troops back home before these hired guns start killing them
for profit.

===atrios has a link to the video itself. it's being hosted over at
bare knucle politics. and, yes, it's pretty damn disturbing. shooting
up innocent civilians is reprehensible.

==Now why did I suspect...that the "contractors" in question were our
own Blackwater mercs? Welcome to Bushworld, Blair...

==This makes sense It helps explain why the administration has little
interest in a DRAFT. Conscription would eliminate many high-paying
mercenary jobs and the huge profit to companies like USIS and
Blackwell -- hence the opportunity to extract favors from the private
sector.

This war has more to do with creating economic opportunity for
administration insiders and less about achieving meaningful goals to
advance global civilzation. The war is a business opportunity, and
the administration loves business.

The Republican party is a crime syndicate that has come to control
the American bureaucracy for its own criminal interests. The barbaric
actions in Iraq and Guantanamo, done at their behest, are sickening
evidence of this syndicate's excess and hubris.

I love America. This administration is not America, it is a crime
family. And I am sick at the atrocities this administration has
wrought to so many innocent people around the world. My feelings for
the currenet administration and the Republican party are such that I
dare not post them here.

=wow, just, wow Col. Ted Westhusing dies so that slugs like bush,
cheney and coulter can spew their treasonous hate. Sick world W has
created.

==Where are the freepers now?
Hey trolls, who hates America now? This sh*t is sick. It must stop!
If we truly had a liberal media, this would be on a constant loop on
most news channels. Somehow, I think it will be ignored instead.

=Why are mercenaries in Iraq? To make money. Why are our soldiers
there? To enable the Bush and Cheney cronies - who hire the
mercenaries - to make money.
God help us indeed!

==More disturbing video Shooting Iraqi dogs for fun

http://video.google.com/...

=What's wrong with them? They were young men coerced from home into
hell and trained to kill and maim and feel good about it. There is
not a lot of "time off" in the midst of carrying out the objectives
of that training.

=and when Congress will take action and investigate these civilian
shootings by contractors? What are they waiting for? Why are they
soooo afraid to do their job?

And where is the media?

I believe all of us should send an e-mail to those in Washington who
supposedly are working for us. If the majority doesn't want to
schedule a hearing on this issue, the minority should speak out loud
and clear, and perhaps they will wake the media from its stupor

"Those who make peaceful change impossible make violent change
inevitable". (JFK)

=Highly disturbing. In addition, it is a testament to the horrors of
war. I'm no psychologist, but I would venture to guess that the
psychic toll on our military is to some extent a result of the
ethical quandry of killing and looking death in the face without a
clear moral reason.

I pray this ends soon.

Then I pray those that placed our beloved soldiers in this inhuman
position are held accountable.

==God help us. And I mean that literally." If we are not on God's
side, why should He be on ours?

Privatization of war, like privatization of so much else that
conservatives fixate on, is generally a bad idea. Unaccountable,
profit driven entities with no concern for the public interest are
bound to lead to situations which are counter to the public interest.
Look at the "energy crisis" in California a few years ago, engineered
courtesy of Enron.

First, we had Halliburton just do logistics and supply meals, now we
have corporate mercenaries providing "security". What's next? Entire
private, for-profit corporate mercenary armies? Ask the Romans how
well that went.

Yeah. God help us. And I mean that literally.

=From MSNBC in February U.S. contractors in Iraq allege abuses Four
men say they witnessed brutality

By Lisa Myers & the NBC investigative unit
Updated: 4:15 p.m. ET Feb. 17, 2005

There are new allegations that heavily armed private security
contractors in Iraq are brutalizing Iraqi civilians. In an exclusive
interview, four former security contractors told NBC News that they
watched as innocent Iraqi civilians were fired upon, and one crushed
by a truck. The contractors worked for an American company paid by
U.S. taxpayers. The Army is looking into the allegations...
==Will torture defenders oppose this? Why don't we ask them. Let's
see BigTime on Meet the Press next Sunday explaining why contractors
need a license to kill Iraqi civillians.

==Aid Workers..the most important link for the poor I read a while
ago that aid and care has become politicised in Afghanistan.

Persons who aid the military through information in Afghanistan
sometimes get help first, . Snitching is frowned upon all over the
world, its no different in Afghanistan. Those who are reluctant for
many many reasons, including fear of retribution do not. Remember
that many of these people are desperately poor and have few
resources.The policy has caused a lot of resentment towards some of
the Aid workers. They have been put in this position by military
tactics and pressure and has made them the target of resentment by
the local people.

I do hope this is not the case here.I have a huge amount of respect
for the Aid workers.

=God help us indeed Hunter What is next friends?

I wish we had never ever ever darkened Iraq's door! The question now
is really,

how do you fight the broader war on terrorism or how do we get people
to stop hating America?
How about we stop stealing everyone's resources in the name of
Democracy!

The cessation of pre-emptive invasion without cause would be a good
first step.

It IS THE IDEOLOGY of the neo-cons that has failed us on every level.
Govt is dysfunctional. Free markets suck!

Yes God help us.

I suggest we tie the culture of corruption around these people necks,
and that includes the press that gave these folks a pass a great big
fat kiss on the rear end!

inspire change...don't back down

==not only that... but former pm ayad allawi is now saying that human
rights offenses going on in iraq are as bad, if not worse, than they
were with saddam in charge. i believe he came out with that statement
this morning, but the articles doesn't mention the video.

wait, so why are we there again?

Allawi: "These were the precise reasons that we fought Saddam."

===I picked it up without any details other than what you see. I
suspect it's Canadian.

==Where did this originate? I'd like to see more of that story. Is it
American made?

We need a Commander in Chief, not a Campaigner in Chief. - Senate
Democratic Leader Harry Reid

====That is a very sad and shameful video. What have we become?
===Where you might have seen it... That video came out right after
the war started, and it got a lot of play on CNN.

==I can't remember where, but I saw this video elsewhere yesterday
(linked from a diary?), and in the next few seconds, they show one of
the soldiers smiling and saying it was great and that they all just
want to do it again. I suppose that's what we need in war, guys who
will just kill without thinking about it, and/or it's a defense you
put up to keep from going insane from thought and remorse.
=Sometimes the despair thatcomes from confronting an impossible
situation IS enough to push someone over the edge. How many ordinary
soldiers have killed themselves after service in Iraq?

You are a career soldier. "Honor" is more than some abstract concept
to you. It is one of the three underlying concepts your career is
built on:

Duty Honor Country

Yet your duty leaves you in an impossible situation. Honor is
lacking - appallingly so. Yet things aren't what they had been at
the Academy. People may occasionally mouth the rhetoric but do
not "believe." You look into what is occurring and see only the
darkest of voids - all you were taught was wrong. Yet there is no
will to even acknowledge this, much less change it.

I had a brief view of West Point at perhaps it's nadir. A Cadet
Corps that had seen graduate after graduate return home in coffins.
The class of 1966 had the most killed in Vietnam of any class.
My "firsties" entered in 1969. They were plebes to the class
of '66. Keep in mind that anyone entering in 1969 KNEW they were
going to Vietnam. Tet was in '68 and though the VC in effect blew
their wad, it seemed as if the war was NEVER going to end and we had
no way of winning. The NVA wer in things full out and not leaving.

Few Upperclassmen I saw in 1972 were "idealistic" about anything.
THEY were there becuse they had lottery numbers guaranteed to sent
them to 'Nam. Beter to put it off for four years and go as an
officer. Had to be better. Nixon was talking about pulling out.....
but in '72 we were bombing Cambodia..... FUBAR.

But there WERE a few that "believed" - not necessarily in Vietnam -
but at something more. "Duty Honor Country" DID mean something to
them. Whether from military families, or following some
abstract "warrior" ethos, they were there to be leaders, officers in
combat arms. They cared about those they led and were proud in their
abilities - they were all you could ever want in someone leading you
in combat. They were too few.

BUT they WERE "moral" in a way you might find hard to understand.
They knew what was "right" and "wrong". "Honor" WAS important to
them.

I can't imagine the quandry a Captain Fishback or Col. Westhusing
finds themselves in.... You beat your head against a wall trying to
do what's right - but NOBODY wants to hear anything.

At the same time, I'd be surprised to see someone like this take
their own life, unless they felt it was so very hopeless and
pointless.... Look at the effort Fishback went through - two years
of figurative "screaming" - and I expect, a dead career....

In a way this is one of the largest crimes perpetrated by
the "Chickenhawks" - destroying those that DO know the meaning of
Honor, destroying our military over a false cause while letting REAL
enemies escape.

==No video, but a lot of excellent documentation at the site.
Fallujah and the docs on phosphorus.

Our... constitutional heritage rebels at the thought of giving
government the power to control men's minds. Thurgood Marshall
==Can a few bullets in a car be worse than this? Wounded, another
Iraqi writhes on the ground... The marines kill him.

Then cheer.

Watch.

=seems to me there is lot for Westhusing to get depressed about, but
there is nothing in his situation and what is said about his
character that would lead me to believe, he just caves in and kills
himself.

I sincerely believe he was killed because he tried to investigate
with the intent to control the situation and most probably his
superiors were only pretending they wanted him to investigate,
because they officially had to. What they wanted from him was
probably a reasonable explanation and cover-up they could sell the
public, and he might not have wanted to deliver that. Meanwhile the
mercenary got cold feet and killed him. Makes more sense to me.

Your explanation feels too "straight" to me, especially because it
sounds so believable. But if Honor had that much gravitas for him,
the most honorable for him to do (and I would think the way he is
described he did) is fighting against those who behave dishonorable.
To kill yourself would not seem to me the most honorable solution,
therefore I don't believe he did.

==That feeling of safety is an illusion We are not safe anymore and
we do not have the rights we thought we had anymore. But regardless
of that, you are right, it is our duty and obligation to stop this
from continuing.

"Sometimes we must interfere. When human lives are endangered, when
human dignity is in jeopardy, national borders and sensitivities
become irrelevant. Whenever men or women are persecuted because of
their race, religion, or political views, that place must - at that
moment - become the center of the universe." Elie Wiesel (holocaust
survivor)

=NOT saying with any certainty that he did kill himself but saying
that I can understand how it could happen.....

Thinking that anything else however is a truly frightening
possibility.......But again, cover-ups run rampant......
==I am disgusted. This report leaves me speechless. Even so, it
still feels half a world away, and therefore somewhat surreal. I
feel so safe, protected and secure here, half way around the world
from the horrors, obscenties and atrocities which are the war in Iraq.

Yet, in a way, as an American citizen I am indirectly responsible for
what is happening there.

I am not culpable, in the same fashion that PNAC and the WH Bushco
admin are. But nonetheless, it is my duty to stop this flagrantly
illegal and highly unethical occupation of Iraq by my government.

We are all obligated to stop the war.

"Problems can never be solved by using the same pattern of thought
which created them." - Albert Einstein

=Amen to this I know how you feel. How can so many decent people end
up perpetrating so many horrible atrocities?

Decent people DON'T commit atrocities.If Americans are committing
atrocities, in your name and mine, you can call them brother, sister,
child or parent; you can call them neighbor, you can call them
hireling --but you cannot call them decent.

==What's Their Next Job? We've helped create armies of mercinaries.

Collecting ballots in 2008?

=Let us do justice I agree with you. Here's the problem, though.
Somehow the great number of people who do not and would not commit
atrocities have got people who purport to be working on their behalf
who are commiting atrocities. There ought to be a way to disconnect
the two and I'm afraid it may be very slow and ineffective. It's got
to happen, though

=A study determined that 90 percent of the insurgency is now made up
of regular Iraqis who just want us out of there. Some of them may
have been okay with us being there at first but that was before they
were arrested and tortured, their women raped, and their homes burned
by their "liberators."

=That is war Everything, everything in war is barbaric . . . But the
worst barbarity of war is that it forces men collectively to commit
acts against which individually they would revolt with their whole
being. - Ellen Key, 1916

=go support Eric for congress, live blogging
http://www.dailykos.com/...

Just a question

when things like this pop up, we have to ask ourselves.Which one of
us wouldn't join an insurgency if this was happening to America?

I'm even willing to bet that some red-blooded patriots would gladly
give up their own lives if it means killing a few evil invaders who
do things like this.

Political violence is a perfectly legitimate answer to the
persecution handed down by dignitaries of the state. - Riven Turnbull

=This is corporatization of war and the military that is supposed to
protect this country. Their goal is money, not honor, nor love of
country, nor plain decency, nor the safety of my family or yours.
Feel safer now?

The beneficiaries are likely to be...large corporations and
development firms. (O'Connor, J. dissenting in Kelo). God bless you,
J. O'Connor.

=The privatization of war with all of its real cost is another thing
this administration has to answer for. That they can actually pay
people several times what they pay the genuine soldiers and then have
stuff like this happen is just unbelievable and entirely to be
expected given the lack of accountability.

But it is also very very depressing. Those are people getting shot.

=Cocoon You had better stay in your safe cocoon because no American
is safe outside of this country. My cousin has lived in New Zealand
for twenty years and is now a citizen of that country. He was
wearing a University of Colorado sweatshirt a few months ago and got
accosted. He doesn't wear anything "American" any longer. This is
in New Zealand for God's sake.

=Another nail

Every time I hear another disgusting and outrageous item about
something happening in Iraq or in the "war on terror" (they are not
the same) I have to remind myself, What did I think was going on?
Each revelation seems like it must be the worst, but then, here comes
another one. We are being overwhelmed and risk being desensitized by
this whole nightmare. I have never voted to authorize anyone to kill
civilians, bomb journalists, torture people, or any of the other
horribles that this administration is doing in the name of the people
of the US. I feel so powerless.

===Not to mention the manager's hands were never tested for gunshot
residue. Hmmmm. In what world does that make sense? Maybe the one
in which moral standards are seen as a "flaw."

==Things that go bump in the night. That statement is such patent
bullsh*t.
Ok, kiddies, listen up. All you Americans (and others) who've seen a
bazillion crime shows. What's the first rule about what you do when
faced with a potential crime scene?

And this dipshit says that with training he picked up the gun?

Shoot him.

"I desire what is good. Therefore, everyone who does not agree with
me is a traitor." King George III

===Exactly And worth another bold line:

"I knew people would show up," that manager said later in attempting
to explain why he had handled the weapon. "With 30 years from
military and law enforcement training, I did not want the weapon to
get bumped and go off."

With that much military and law enforcement training, he would know
not to touch anything until the scene was secured.

Bush - the ultimate example of the Peter Principle.

==Or Dale Stoffel'd

==He was Dr. Kelley'd

==and look who determined it was his handwriting- the military!
Surprise, surprise.

====We have no firsthand "statements to his family," because they
didn't talk to the writers of this article. It says so in the
article. We have Pentagon and Aegis claims about what he said to his
family, to people in Iraq, etc. The transcript of the
official "investigation" into his death, with attendent emails,
forensic handwriting expert report [for the purported "suicide
note"], and ballistic analysis have not been released to the public
or press.To run off with assuming, on the evidence of the possible-
murderers, that the colonel committed suicide, is the equivalent of
tele-diagnosis of videotape. It doesn't pass the smell test.

Let justice be done.

==Sounds like he confronted the mercenaries involved and was
threatened for doing so. I would not tell my family "didn't think I'd
make it last night", if that was supposed to mean, he feared he would
kill himself. To me it sounds as if he were in a situation where he
feared for his life, because he might have been threatened by the
people whose behaviour he was supposed to control or investigate.

He might have feared to get killed, because the mercenary knew he was
not going to cover it up but struggled with the mess over its
morality. I agree with you, my first reactions to the LA article was
that he was murdered. It makes a lot of more sense than to kill
himself.

I rather believe he was depressed because he knew that (may be) his
superiors didn't really want him "to investigate". They wanted him to
pretend to investigate and come up with an "acceptable" result. He
might have been pressured and threatened from both sides.

==which of these statements
"This is a mess ... dunno what I will do with this,"

"[I] didn't think I'd make it last night."

"In Ted's voice, there was fear. He did not like the nighttime and
being alone."

Says suicide to you? And what description leads you to believe he was
an introvert, or a guy who felt a huge burden of responsibility?
Which leads you to believe he was not a threat?

===I have to go with suicide.
His behavior and writings fit.

This straight arrow who came up with the noble vision of honorable
service finally met up with crass reality: America, 2005. And he
broke.

Don't even go to murder; this whole culture murdered him.

Daddy, What did you do in Bush Two?

===and just who is the source?
Look at the sources describing the behavior, and the source
who "found" the note and the gun. If this war has taught us anything,
its to question, question, question.

Yellowcake?
WMD?
Iraq al Qaeda links?
Legend of Jessica Lynch?
Legend of Pat Tilman?
Abu Ghraib a few bad apples?

==Crime scene 101
Imagine trying that bullsh*t in a court of law. The other problem is
these "witness statements" will be the official, unchallenged version
of the truth.

I hope his family fights this, they deserve a real investigation and
real answers, no matter how Col. Westhusing died.

=Why the surprise? This is what 18 year old kids do if they are
suddenly thrust into a position of infinite power when they formerly
had no power and were subject to the whims of adults.

...and add to it the fact that the infinite power is over people who
most Americans already considered subhuman, and basic military
training and barracks atmosphere dehumanizes even more.

==Contractor murder or suicide? This stinks:

"Col. Ted Westhusing, a military ethicist who volunteered to go to
Iraq, was upset by what he saw. His apparent suicide raises questions.

Westhusing, 44, was no ordinary officer. He was one of the Army's
leading scholars of military ethics, a full professor at West Point
who volunteered to serve in Iraq to be able to better teach his
students. He had a doctorate in philosophy; his dissertation was an
extended meditation on the meaning of honor.

So it was only natural that Westhusing acted when he learned of
possible corruption by U.S. contractors in Iraq. A few weeks before
he died, Westhusing received an anonymous complaint that a private
security company he oversaw had cheated the U.S. government and
committed human rights violations. Westhusing confronted the
contractor and reported the concerns to superiors, who launched an
investigation."

"I knew people would show up," that manager said later in attempting
to explain why he had handled the weapon. "With 30 years from
military and law enforcement training, I did not want the weapon to
get bumped and go off."

This whole story stinks. Please read, and as you read figure out
where the damaging yet unsourced information can be attributed.

=Possible collateral damage? Four aid workers kidnapped in Iraq
Saturday.

Dan McTeague, the parliamentary secretary for Canadians abroad, said
the Canadians were kidnapped on Saturday along with two other aid
workers from the U.S. and Britain, but wouldn't release their names
or the organization they worked for in order to "protect the safety
of the individuals involved."

Link

="God help us" "God help us."

In the past five years I can't tell you how many times I've said
that. Blowback is going to be horrendous.

Every time I think that about the blowback there ends up being no
response from the media, from anyone. I would have thought that
there would be a huge outcry from our entire country when the white
phosphorus story came out. I have just about given up. What
horrific thing has to happen to wake up all these neocons out there?

==helped with the collection of ballot papers in the Now you know why
the results were out so soon and the administration knew who won. The
results were faked! Who really won, I wonder. My guess is extremist
religous candidates
==Your tax dollars at work. From the article Hunter links to:

"The company was recently awarded a £220 million security contract in
Iraq by the United States government. Aegis conducts a number of
security duties and helped with the collection of ballot papers in
the country's recent referendum."

Now, maybe these guys who posted the video weren't part of a US
funded contract. Maybe they were. But try to tell the victims of the
murders the difference.

Also, the guy that runs the place was accused in 1998 of selling
weapons to Sierra Leone in defiance of UN sanctions. Nice guy for us
to do business with, eh?

"I was so easy to defeat, I was so easy to control, I didn't even
know there was a war."

=I'm defective too. Worse, I can't even fathom "... the idea that
monetary values could outweigh moral ones in..." peacetime. Nor in
wartime.

In the end, the money's gone... somewhere. Morality is who you
f**king well are.

Westhusing was a good, decent, intelligent man.

R.I.P.

Alas, he was working for a man who certainly isn't good or decent.

=Actually, he was working for you, ogre. And for me. And for his wife
and children.
And I believe Aegis murdered him.

=And the psychiatrist was a Lieutenant Colonel in the military, which
says the rest
===I was totally going to post that!

That quote just kind of leaves you speechless, doesnt it? We should
all have such a character "flaw." I suppose it is our own flaws that
will keep us from seeing that this was a suicide and not actually a
murder/coverup.

==It says it all about the psychiatrist. She sees this as a flaw. She
is sick. I would have been very surprised if the Pentagon had found a
non-twisted psychiatrist to evaluate the colonel's death.

Since his death first made the news in June, I have assumed that he
was murdered. I'd bet he isn't the only one, or the last one.
Everyone who investigates this hydra should make sure that they have
backup reporting plans in place. It wouldn't save the investigator's
life but it might save their work.

Let justice be done.

=War Profiteering is Hardly News Neither are mercenaries.

From the civil war through Vietnam, profiteering was part and parcel
of the war effort. In WWII, it was the "five percent myers"; in
Vietnam, the storyline was that if you wanted to get rich in the
Army, Saigon was the place to do it.

Compared to the scale of war profiteering in WWII and Vietnam, Iraq
is chump change.

And, of course, most of the contractors in Iraq are former Special
Forces and SAS.

==Yeah You're probably right, but what I was getting at was how
incredibly sick the "official" line is (as parroted by the Army
report): I.e., that it's just hunky-dory that contractors are making
shitloads of money off the war. Me personally, I find it sickening.
That a contractor killed Westhoving is plausible, but I can also see
how Westhoving might have become distraught at the Army brass's
kowtowing to the war profiteers. From what the article said about
his background, Westhoving was gung-ho and idealistic, the kind of
guy who believed with all his heart in "duty, honor, and country".
When he got over to Iraq and witnessed the cornucopia of corruption
firsthand -- and saw that it was officially sanctioned by the Army
brass -- it probably shook him to his core. What's going on over
there is unconscionable: U.S. soldiers die, US contractors drag bags
off money back home.

==An ethicist... couldn't come to grips with capitalism? Please. And
then there's the religion angle...His friends and family struggle
with the idea that Westhusing could have killed himself. He was a
loving father and husband and a devout Catholic.
..
He immediately stood out on the leafy Atlanta campus. Married with
children, he was surrounded by young, single students. He was a
deeply faithful Christian in a graduate program of professional
skeptics.
In Catholic thought, suicide is a mortal sin:
Suicide is murder of the self. It is contrary to the love of God,
self, family, friends and neighbors. It is of especially grave
nature, if it is intended to set an example for others to follow.
Voluntary cooperation in a suicide is also contrary to the moral law.
However, the responsibility of and gravity of suicide can be
diminished in the cases of grave psychological disturbances, anguish,
grave fear of hardship, suffering, or torture. But this does not make
it morally permissible, and it is the judgement of God that will
measure the gravity or responsibility of the sin.

And the fact that the contract manager (that was apparently having a
dispute with the Col.) was alone with him for 15 minutes, admitted to
handling the weapon after the Col's death (at minimum, tampering with
a potential crime scene), was not tested for powder residue, and yet
the death is ruled a suicide? I think this article is deliberately
written to raise some questions, folks.

==The Army report sounds like Bullsh*t!

Westhusing was a career soldier and officer. It's extremely unlikely
that he was driven to suicide by the horror of war.

He was also an accomplished scholar and professor of ethics. It's
extremely unlikely that he was driven to suicide by an inability to
grasp the concept of free enterprise.

Yet he was described as being upset by the substitution of
battlefield ethics with those of capitalism. And he was also
described as the kind of person who would do something about it. That
makes him an unlikely risk for suicide, but a very realistic risk as
a target
===I think it does say it all

It sounds to me like poor Colonel Westhusing had a head-on collision
with the disgusting immorality that is Iraq. According to the Army's
own report, the poor Colonel was having trouble adjusting to the fact
that profit, not honor, is now the highest American ideal!

That an American Army officer wrote the following and did not choke
to death on the hypocrisy of her words is mind-boggling:

"Despite his intelligence, his ability to grasp the idea that profit
is an important goal for people working in the private sector was
surprisingly limited," wrote Lt. Col. Lisa Breitenbach. "He could not
shift his mind-set from the military notion of completing a mission
irrespective of cost, nor could he change his belief that doing the
right thing because it was the right thing to do should be the sole
motivator for businesses."

I can see why the poor Colonel was having trouble reconciling young
American soldiers dying for the country while greedy contractors
made "a killing" of another kind. His wife is right: Iraq is what
happened to him. He was an honorable man and there is no honor is
Iraq, at least among those running the war.

God Bless Colonel Westhusing's family. And God Bless Colonel
Westhusing, a man of honor.

==It says a lot, but not all.

I read the Westhusing story this morning and was floored. I don't
believe they have made a convincing case for suicide. And Hunter, by
juxtaposing these stories, really drives home the possibility that
contractors murdered Westhusing to keep him from rocking the boat
back in the states.

I hope Westhusing's family is not so shaken by their loss that they
fail to get a complete, independent accounting of what happened. And
if they can summon the strength through their sorrow, I would love to
see Mrs. Westhusing take on a Sheehan-like crusade for the truth and
accountablity.

This story should be HUGE!

===Terrorists, Contractors & Geneva I thought that terrorits were
classified as such because they don't wear the uniforms of the
country they were fighting for, and should thus exempt from the
Geneva conventions. Why should professional mercenaries receive any
different treatment when they commit war crimes against civilians?

=The murderers ought be turned over to the tender mercies of the
Iraqi justice system.

Soldiers of fortune are not entitled to due process under the
Uniformed Code of Military Justice.

==http://www.dailykos.com/story/2005/11/27/172747/10