Special Feature
(This article is reprinted with permission of the author and
was first printed by The Texas Observor on March 9, 2007. It
is timely and very important, given the recent hearings with
General Petraeus and the status of the War in Iraq, as well as
the discussions of the various candidates regarding the
conduct of the War. We are able to obtain articles like these
through the generosity of the authors themselves, for which
we are grateful, and share this with you, our readers, in the
hopes that you will have additional information about our
Armed Forces, their heroic actions, and the difficulties that
have been faced by a number of our best and brightest:
Colonel Ted Westhusing being one of them---CF)
I am Sullied-No More
Faced with the Iraq war's corruption, Col. Ted Westhusing chose death
before dishonor
ROBERT BRYCE |
Ted Westhusing was a true believer. And that was his fatal flaw. A colonel in the
U.S. Army, Westhusing had a good job teaching English at the U.S. Military
Academy at West Point. He was a devout Catholic who went to church nearly
every Sunday. He had a wife and three young children.
He didn’t have to go to Iraq. But Westhusing was such a believer that he
volunteered for what he thought was a noble cause. At West Point, Westhusing
sought out people who opposed the war in an effort to change their minds. “He
absolutely believed that this was a just war,” said one officer who was close to
him. “He was wholly enthusiastic about this mission.” His tour of duty in Iraq was
to last six months.
About a month before he was to return to his family—on June 5, 2005—
Westhusing was found dead in his trailer at Camp Dublin in Baghdad. At the time,
he was the highest-ranking American soldier to die in Iraq. The Army’s Criminal
Investigation Command report on Westhusing’s death explained it as a
“perforating gunshot wound of the head and Manner of Death was suicide.”
He was 44.
In the ever-expanding tragedy of the second Iraq war, the tragedy of Ted
Westhusing is just one among tens of thousands. Four years of warfare have
decimated Iraq. Its economy and infrastructure are in ruins. Tens of thousands,
perhaps hundreds of thousands, of Iraqis are dead. Hundreds of thousands more
have fled the country. More than 20,000 American soldiers have been wounded,
and more than 3,000 killed. Yet among all of those tragedies, amid all the
suffering and heartache, Westhusing’s story stands out. It shows how one man’s
life, and the fervent beliefs that defined it, were crushed by the corruption and
deceit that he saw around him.
The disillusion that killed Ted Westhusing is part of the invoice that America will
be paying long after the United States pulls its last troops out of Iraq.
Some 846 American soldiers died in Iraq in 2005. Of those, 22 were suicides.
Westhusing’s suicide, like nearly every other, leaves the survivors asking the
same questions: Why? And what was it that drove the deceased to such despair?
In Westhusing’s case, the answers go far beyond his personal struggles and
straight to the heart of America’s goals in Iraq.
When he was in Iraq, Westhusing worked for one of the most famous generals in
the U.S. military, David Petraeus. In January, Petraeus was appointed by
President Bush to lead all U.S. forces in Iraq. As the head of counterterrorism and
special operations under Petraeus, Westhusing oversaw the single most important
task facing the U.S. military in Iraq then and now: training the Iraqi security
forces.
All the goals set out by Bush and his band of neoconservative backers—a
democratic Iraq, a safe and secure country that can support and govern itself, a
country able to rebuild itself with its vast oil wealth, a place governed by pro-
Western secular rulers who can provide a counterweight to Islamic extremists in
the region—depend on America’s ability to “stand up” the Iraqi army and police
force. Without a dependable security apparatus, none of those goals is achievable.
When he arrived in Iraq, Westhusing discovered that just like the rest of Iraqi
society, the Iraqi military and police are riven by religion. Religious hatred, Sunni
versus Shiite—combined with the corruption that permeates Iraqi society—made
his job impossible.
Two years before Westhusing left for Baghdad, he had finished his doctoral
dissertation in philosophy at Emory University in Atlanta. The focus was on honor
and the ethics of war. Westhusing wanted to understand arete—the ancient Greek
word meaning virtue, skill, and excellence. His quest for understanding the
concept was, he believed, a central part of his existence. “Born to be a warrior, I
desire these answers not just for philosophical reasons, but for self-knowledge,”
he wrote.
Westhusing did not find excellence or virtue in Iraq.
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 [in Iraq] 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.”
The officer said that “strength of character was Ted’s defining characteristic. It
was unflinching integrity.” That integrity, he said, was also Westhusing’s great
flaw. “To be a true flaw, the personality has to have great strength. And that
characteristic caused his downfall.”
Westhusing was born in Dallas, one of seven children. He went to grade school in
La Porte, near Houston, until the seventh grade, when his family moved to Tulsa.
He was an outstanding student. He was the starting point guard on the basketball
team at Jenks High School, a National Merit Scholar, and a devout Christian. He
was a hard worker. He was so devoted to basketball that he would shoot 100
jump shots each morning before school. His work ethic, grades, and reputation
gave him his pick of colleges. He was accepted at Notre Dame and Duke. He chose
West Point. Westhusing’s father had served in the Korean War and had later been
in the Navy Reserve.
Westhusing got to West Point in 1979, a time of major upheaval. The academy
was still going through the aftershocks of a major cheating scandal. There was a
tremendous emphasis on ethics and truthfulness. Westhusing loved it. As an
underclassman, he was his company’s honor representative on the cadet
committee. In 1983, during his senior year, he was selected as the honor captain
for the whole school, a position that made him the highest-ranking ethics official
within the cadet corps. In that position, Westhusing helped adjudicate all of the
honor violations that came before the committee. That year, he graduated third in
his class.
From West Point, he went on to serve in the 82nd Airborne Division. He went to
Ranger and Airborne schools and did stints in Italy, South Korea, and Honduras.
He learned to speak Russian and Italian. And he continued his quest for
intellectual excellence. In 2000, he went to Emory for a master’s degree in
philosophy. In 2002, he moved to Austin to take a six-week class in classical
Greek at the University of Texas. Westhusing and his Greek teacher at UT, Thomas
Palaima, worked as consultants on a television documentary about the Trojan
horse.
At West Point, Westhusing was comfortable in his teaching job. He had no reason
to do anything else. He was at the pinnacle of his profession and doing a job he
loved. But in late 2004, he got a call from a former commander in the 82nd
Airborne Division asking if he wanted to go to Iraq. Westhusing didn’t hesitate
before saying yes. Westhusing’s father, Keith Westhusing, would later tell T.
Christian Miller, a reporter for the Los Angeles Times, that his son wanted to go
to Iraq to “obtain verification.” Going would make him a better soldier, his father
is quoted as saying in Miller’s recent book about corruption in Iraq, Blood Money.
A stint in Iraq would “lend authenticity to his status, not only as a soldier, but as
an instructor at West Point.”
A fellow officer who worked with Westhusing at West Point said in an interview
that prior to leaving for Iraq, “Ted never swayed in his belief that the Iraq
mission was both just and being performed correctly; he told me personally that
he would stay longer than the assigned six months if necessary. Before leaving,
he was engaged in intense debate with the senior philosophy professor in the
department. Ted believed in the mission, while his counterpart had several
questions as to whether Operation Iraqi Freedom met the standards of a just
war.”
Westhusing’s wife, Michelle, later told investigators that her husband believed
“going to Iraq would make him a better professor when he taught cadets who
would likely be going over there. ... He thought we were doing a great thing in
Iraq.”
The first stop on Westhusing’s deployment was Fort Benning, Georgia. He went
through his medical exams, collected his equipment, and worked on his shooting
skills. After so much time in the classroom, those skills were not sharp. According
to documents obtained through the Freedom of Information Act, Westhusing
scored just 170 on the combat pistol range when he was tested on January 15,
2005. If he had scored just 20 points lower, he would not have qualified.
Nevertheless, Westhusing’s first few weeks in Iraq were, he wrote to a friend,
“high adventure.” His formal title was director, counter terrorism/special
operations, Civilian Police Assistance Training Team, Multi-National Security
Transition Command-Iraq. He liked working closely with his Iraqi counterparts
and seemed to get along well with the 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 powerful private equity firm
whose investors formerly included George H.W. Bush and former Secretary of
State James A. Baker III.) In another message to a friend back home, he said
that “if you are not of strong character and know right from wrong, you will
leave this place devastated in personal esteem and priceless human beings will be
harmed.”
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.”
Westhusing was devastated. Even if the charges were accurate, there was little
that could be done. Iraq had no functioning judicial system, and there were
questions about jurisdiction in case the contractors were indicted. Westhusing
wrote to his family, telling them about the problems with the contractors, and
said he needed to talk to a lawyer about the issues he was handling.
By late May, Westhusing was becoming despondent over what he was seeing.
Steeped in—and totally believing in—the West Point credo that a cadet will “not
lie, cheat, or steal, nor tolerate those who do,” Westhusing found himself
surrounded by contractors who had no interest in his ideals. He asked family
members to pray for him. In a phone call with his wife, Michelle, who was back at
West Point, Westhusing told her he planned to tell Petraeus that he was going to
quit. She pleaded with him to just finish his tour and return home.
Westhusing quit exercising, started chewing tobacco, and was increasingly
withdrawn. His co-workers noted that he was fidgety. On the night of June 4, one
of the female contractors who worked with Westhusing said he appeared “very
tired, almost like he hadn’t been sleeping,” and was “out of sorts” and scratching
his legs “quite a bit.” The same person said that Westhusing had begun to
“play/examine his weapon” and that he seemed “mesmerized” by his pistol. The
same contractor mentioned that Westhusing talked about an ongoing problem
with the Iraqis coming into the counterterrorism training program. The program
was always at risk of being infiltrated by members of Iraqi militias, criminal gangs,
and other elements. Westhusing asked the contractor for her thoughts about
“vetting the students prior to the course.” The contractor said that after the
conversation, Westhusing sat in the office and would “say aloud that he didn’t
know how to solve the problem with the vetting issue. ... Only once did he
address me directly. He said, ‘I just don’t see a way to resolve this problem.’”
A few minutes later, the female contractor said Westhusing “stood up and started
to examine his weapon again” for about five minutes. The next morning, on June
5, Westhusing had one meeting at Camp Dublin with the contractors and another
with government personnel. At the second meeting he expressed his disgust with
“money-grubbing contractors” and said he “had not come over to Iraq for this.”
Westhusing was slated to leave Camp Dublin after lunch. When he did not show
up for a meeting, one of the contractors went looking for him. 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. [Redacted name]—
You are only interested in your career and provide no support to your staff—no
msn [mission] 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. [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
Life needs trust. Trust is no more for me here in Iraq.
It appears that shortly after writing the note, at about 1 p.m. Baghdad time,
Westhusing took the 9 mm Beretta automatic pistol he’d been issued at Fort
Benning five months earlier, placed it behind his left ear, and pulled the trigger.
After Westhusing’s death, there was a great deal of speculation. Some family
members and friends began wondering if he had been murdered. Westhusing was
supposed to leave for the U.S. on July 7. Yet he killed himself on June 5. Why,
they asked, couldn’t he stick it out for just one more month?
Much of the speculation focused on USIS and the contractors. Did Westhusing
have evidence that the contractors wanted to keep quiet? There were conflicting
stories from the contractors about how they discovered Westhusing’s body. One
manager said that the first time he went to find Westhusing after lunch on June 5,
the door to Westhusing’s room was locked. But on a second visit, he said, he
found the door unlocked. Further, one of the first people to find Westhusing in
his room, a military contractor, moved Westhusing’s pistol from its original
position, claiming he had done so for safety reasons. That person was never
checked for gunpowder residue.
While there were some odd details about his death, the Army’s investigation
quickly concluded it was a suicide. An Army psychologist who looked into
Westhusing’s case concluded that despite his superior intellect, his ability to
accept the fact that some Americans were only in Iraq for the money was
“surprisingly limited. 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.”
Twelve days after Westhusing’s body was found, Army investigators talked with
Michelle Westhusing. She told them the suicide note found near her husband’s
body matched “almost verbatim” the discussions she had had with him, and that
the handwriting matched her husband’s. She said Westhusing had “lost faith in
his commanders” and “did not trust the Iraqis as far as he could spit.”
Asked by investigators if she had anything else to add, she replied, “The one
thing I really wish is you guys to go to everyone listed in that letter and speak
with them. I think Ted gave his life to let everyone know what was going on.
They need to get to the bottom of it, and hope all these bad things get cleaned
up.”
It appears that Michelle didn’t get her wish.
In September 2005, the Army’s inspector general concluded an investigation into
allegations raised in the anonymous letter to Westhusing shortly before his death.
It found no basis for any of the issues raised. Although the report is redacted in
places, it is clear that the investigation was aimed at determining whether Fil or
Petraeus had ignored the corruption and human rights abuses allegedly occurring
within the training program for Iraqi security personnel. The report, approved by
the Army’s vice chief of staff, four-star Gen. Richard Cody, concluded that
“commands and commanders operated in an Iraqi cultural and ethical
environment often at odds with Western practices.” It said none of the unit
members “accepted institutional corruption or human rights abuses. Unit
members, and specifically [redacted name] and [redacted name] took appropriate
action where corruption or abuse was reported.”
The context, placement and relative size of the redacted names strongly suggest
that they refer to Petraeus and Fil.
Last November, Fil returned to Iraq. He is now the commanding general of the
Multinational Division in Baghdad and of the 1st Cavalry Division.
On February 12, Petraeus took command of all U.S. forces in Iraq. He now wears
four stars. And as in 2005, Petraeus’s main job in Iraq will be building up
beleaguered police and military. He made that point clear in a open letter to U.S.
soldiers and civilians serving in Iraq, which he had distributed on the day he took
command. His letter declared that, “Shoulder-to-shoulder with our Iraqi
comrades, we will conduct a pivotal campaign to improve security for the Iraqi
people. Together with our Iraqi partners, we must defeat those who oppose the
new Iraq.”
Austinite
Robert Bryce is an Observer contributing writer.
was first printed by The Texas Observor on March 9, 2007. It
is timely and very important, given the recent hearings with
General Petraeus and the status of the War in Iraq, as well as
the discussions of the various candidates regarding the
conduct of the War. We are able to obtain articles like these
through the generosity of the authors themselves, for which
we are grateful, and share this with you, our readers, in the
hopes that you will have additional information about our
Armed Forces, their heroic actions, and the difficulties that
have been faced by a number of our best and brightest:
Colonel Ted Westhusing being one of them---CF)
I am Sullied-No More
Faced with the Iraq war's corruption, Col. Ted Westhusing chose death
before dishonor
ROBERT BRYCE |
Ted Westhusing was a true believer. And that was his fatal flaw. A colonel in the
U.S. Army, Westhusing had a good job teaching English at the U.S. Military
Academy at West Point. He was a devout Catholic who went to church nearly
every Sunday. He had a wife and three young children.
He didn’t have to go to Iraq. But Westhusing was such a believer that he
volunteered for what he thought was a noble cause. At West Point, Westhusing
sought out people who opposed the war in an effort to change their minds. “He
absolutely believed that this was a just war,” said one officer who was close to
him. “He was wholly enthusiastic about this mission.” His tour of duty in Iraq was
to last six months.
About a month before he was to return to his family—on June 5, 2005—
Westhusing was found dead in his trailer at Camp Dublin in Baghdad. At the time,
he was the highest-ranking American soldier to die in Iraq. The Army’s Criminal
Investigation Command report on Westhusing’s death explained it as a
“perforating gunshot wound of the head and Manner of Death was suicide.”
He was 44.
In the ever-expanding tragedy of the second Iraq war, the tragedy of Ted
Westhusing is just one among tens of thousands. Four years of warfare have
decimated Iraq. Its economy and infrastructure are in ruins. Tens of thousands,
perhaps hundreds of thousands, of Iraqis are dead. Hundreds of thousands more
have fled the country. More than 20,000 American soldiers have been wounded,
and more than 3,000 killed. Yet among all of those tragedies, amid all the
suffering and heartache, Westhusing’s story stands out. It shows how one man’s
life, and the fervent beliefs that defined it, were crushed by the corruption and
deceit that he saw around him.
The disillusion that killed Ted Westhusing is part of the invoice that America will
be paying long after the United States pulls its last troops out of Iraq.
Some 846 American soldiers died in Iraq in 2005. Of those, 22 were suicides.
Westhusing’s suicide, like nearly every other, leaves the survivors asking the
same questions: Why? And what was it that drove the deceased to such despair?
In Westhusing’s case, the answers go far beyond his personal struggles and
straight to the heart of America’s goals in Iraq.
When he was in Iraq, Westhusing worked for one of the most famous generals in
the U.S. military, David Petraeus. In January, Petraeus was appointed by
President Bush to lead all U.S. forces in Iraq. As the head of counterterrorism and
special operations under Petraeus, Westhusing oversaw the single most important
task facing the U.S. military in Iraq then and now: training the Iraqi security
forces.
All the goals set out by Bush and his band of neoconservative backers—a
democratic Iraq, a safe and secure country that can support and govern itself, a
country able to rebuild itself with its vast oil wealth, a place governed by pro-
Western secular rulers who can provide a counterweight to Islamic extremists in
the region—depend on America’s ability to “stand up” the Iraqi army and police
force. Without a dependable security apparatus, none of those goals is achievable.
When he arrived in Iraq, Westhusing discovered that just like the rest of Iraqi
society, the Iraqi military and police are riven by religion. Religious hatred, Sunni
versus Shiite—combined with the corruption that permeates Iraqi society—made
his job impossible.
Two years before Westhusing left for Baghdad, he had finished his doctoral
dissertation in philosophy at Emory University in Atlanta. The focus was on honor
and the ethics of war. Westhusing wanted to understand arete—the ancient Greek
word meaning virtue, skill, and excellence. His quest for understanding the
concept was, he believed, a central part of his existence. “Born to be a warrior, I
desire these answers not just for philosophical reasons, but for self-knowledge,”
he wrote.
Westhusing did not find excellence or virtue in Iraq.
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 [in Iraq] 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.”
The officer said that “strength of character was Ted’s defining characteristic. It
was unflinching integrity.” That integrity, he said, was also Westhusing’s great
flaw. “To be a true flaw, the personality has to have great strength. And that
characteristic caused his downfall.”
Westhusing was born in Dallas, one of seven children. He went to grade school in
La Porte, near Houston, until the seventh grade, when his family moved to Tulsa.
He was an outstanding student. He was the starting point guard on the basketball
team at Jenks High School, a National Merit Scholar, and a devout Christian. He
was a hard worker. He was so devoted to basketball that he would shoot 100
jump shots each morning before school. His work ethic, grades, and reputation
gave him his pick of colleges. He was accepted at Notre Dame and Duke. He chose
West Point. Westhusing’s father had served in the Korean War and had later been
in the Navy Reserve.
Westhusing got to West Point in 1979, a time of major upheaval. The academy
was still going through the aftershocks of a major cheating scandal. There was a
tremendous emphasis on ethics and truthfulness. Westhusing loved it. As an
underclassman, he was his company’s honor representative on the cadet
committee. In 1983, during his senior year, he was selected as the honor captain
for the whole school, a position that made him the highest-ranking ethics official
within the cadet corps. In that position, Westhusing helped adjudicate all of the
honor violations that came before the committee. That year, he graduated third in
his class.
From West Point, he went on to serve in the 82nd Airborne Division. He went to
Ranger and Airborne schools and did stints in Italy, South Korea, and Honduras.
He learned to speak Russian and Italian. And he continued his quest for
intellectual excellence. In 2000, he went to Emory for a master’s degree in
philosophy. In 2002, he moved to Austin to take a six-week class in classical
Greek at the University of Texas. Westhusing and his Greek teacher at UT, Thomas
Palaima, worked as consultants on a television documentary about the Trojan
horse.
At West Point, Westhusing was comfortable in his teaching job. He had no reason
to do anything else. He was at the pinnacle of his profession and doing a job he
loved. But in late 2004, he got a call from a former commander in the 82nd
Airborne Division asking if he wanted to go to Iraq. Westhusing didn’t hesitate
before saying yes. Westhusing’s father, Keith Westhusing, would later tell T.
Christian Miller, a reporter for the Los Angeles Times, that his son wanted to go
to Iraq to “obtain verification.” Going would make him a better soldier, his father
is quoted as saying in Miller’s recent book about corruption in Iraq, Blood Money.
A stint in Iraq would “lend authenticity to his status, not only as a soldier, but as
an instructor at West Point.”
A fellow officer who worked with Westhusing at West Point said in an interview
that prior to leaving for Iraq, “Ted never swayed in his belief that the Iraq
mission was both just and being performed correctly; he told me personally that
he would stay longer than the assigned six months if necessary. Before leaving,
he was engaged in intense debate with the senior philosophy professor in the
department. Ted believed in the mission, while his counterpart had several
questions as to whether Operation Iraqi Freedom met the standards of a just
war.”
Westhusing’s wife, Michelle, later told investigators that her husband believed
“going to Iraq would make him a better professor when he taught cadets who
would likely be going over there. ... He thought we were doing a great thing in
Iraq.”
The first stop on Westhusing’s deployment was Fort Benning, Georgia. He went
through his medical exams, collected his equipment, and worked on his shooting
skills. After so much time in the classroom, those skills were not sharp. According
to documents obtained through the Freedom of Information Act, Westhusing
scored just 170 on the combat pistol range when he was tested on January 15,
2005. If he had scored just 20 points lower, he would not have qualified.
Nevertheless, Westhusing’s first few weeks in Iraq were, he wrote to a friend,
“high adventure.” His formal title was director, counter terrorism/special
operations, Civilian Police Assistance Training Team, Multi-National Security
Transition Command-Iraq. He liked working closely with his Iraqi counterparts
and seemed to get along well with the 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 powerful private equity firm
whose investors formerly included George H.W. Bush and former Secretary of
State James A. Baker III.) In another message to a friend back home, he said
that “if you are not of strong character and know right from wrong, you will
leave this place devastated in personal esteem and priceless human beings will be
harmed.”
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.”
Westhusing was devastated. Even if the charges were accurate, there was little
that could be done. Iraq had no functioning judicial system, and there were
questions about jurisdiction in case the contractors were indicted. Westhusing
wrote to his family, telling them about the problems with the contractors, and
said he needed to talk to a lawyer about the issues he was handling.
By late May, Westhusing was becoming despondent over what he was seeing.
Steeped in—and totally believing in—the West Point credo that a cadet will “not
lie, cheat, or steal, nor tolerate those who do,” Westhusing found himself
surrounded by contractors who had no interest in his ideals. He asked family
members to pray for him. In a phone call with his wife, Michelle, who was back at
West Point, Westhusing told her he planned to tell Petraeus that he was going to
quit. She pleaded with him to just finish his tour and return home.
Westhusing quit exercising, started chewing tobacco, and was increasingly
withdrawn. His co-workers noted that he was fidgety. On the night of June 4, one
of the female contractors who worked with Westhusing said he appeared “very
tired, almost like he hadn’t been sleeping,” and was “out of sorts” and scratching
his legs “quite a bit.” The same person said that Westhusing had begun to
“play/examine his weapon” and that he seemed “mesmerized” by his pistol. The
same contractor mentioned that Westhusing talked about an ongoing problem
with the Iraqis coming into the counterterrorism training program. The program
was always at risk of being infiltrated by members of Iraqi militias, criminal gangs,
and other elements. Westhusing asked the contractor for her thoughts about
“vetting the students prior to the course.” The contractor said that after the
conversation, Westhusing sat in the office and would “say aloud that he didn’t
know how to solve the problem with the vetting issue. ... Only once did he
address me directly. He said, ‘I just don’t see a way to resolve this problem.’”
A few minutes later, the female contractor said Westhusing “stood up and started
to examine his weapon again” for about five minutes. The next morning, on June
5, Westhusing had one meeting at Camp Dublin with the contractors and another
with government personnel. At the second meeting he expressed his disgust with
“money-grubbing contractors” and said he “had not come over to Iraq for this.”
Westhusing was slated to leave Camp Dublin after lunch. When he did not show
up for a meeting, one of the contractors went looking for him. 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. [Redacted name]—
You are only interested in your career and provide no support to your staff—no
msn [mission] 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. [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
Life needs trust. Trust is no more for me here in Iraq.
It appears that shortly after writing the note, at about 1 p.m. Baghdad time,
Westhusing took the 9 mm Beretta automatic pistol he’d been issued at Fort
Benning five months earlier, placed it behind his left ear, and pulled the trigger.
After Westhusing’s death, there was a great deal of speculation. Some family
members and friends began wondering if he had been murdered. Westhusing was
supposed to leave for the U.S. on July 7. Yet he killed himself on June 5. Why,
they asked, couldn’t he stick it out for just one more month?
Much of the speculation focused on USIS and the contractors. Did Westhusing
have evidence that the contractors wanted to keep quiet? There were conflicting
stories from the contractors about how they discovered Westhusing’s body. One
manager said that the first time he went to find Westhusing after lunch on June 5,
the door to Westhusing’s room was locked. But on a second visit, he said, he
found the door unlocked. Further, one of the first people to find Westhusing in
his room, a military contractor, moved Westhusing’s pistol from its original
position, claiming he had done so for safety reasons. That person was never
checked for gunpowder residue.
While there were some odd details about his death, the Army’s investigation
quickly concluded it was a suicide. An Army psychologist who looked into
Westhusing’s case concluded that despite his superior intellect, his ability to
accept the fact that some Americans were only in Iraq for the money was
“surprisingly limited. 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.”
Twelve days after Westhusing’s body was found, Army investigators talked with
Michelle Westhusing. She told them the suicide note found near her husband’s
body matched “almost verbatim” the discussions she had had with him, and that
the handwriting matched her husband’s. She said Westhusing had “lost faith in
his commanders” and “did not trust the Iraqis as far as he could spit.”
Asked by investigators if she had anything else to add, she replied, “The one
thing I really wish is you guys to go to everyone listed in that letter and speak
with them. I think Ted gave his life to let everyone know what was going on.
They need to get to the bottom of it, and hope all these bad things get cleaned
up.”
It appears that Michelle didn’t get her wish.
In September 2005, the Army’s inspector general concluded an investigation into
allegations raised in the anonymous letter to Westhusing shortly before his death.
It found no basis for any of the issues raised. Although the report is redacted in
places, it is clear that the investigation was aimed at determining whether Fil or
Petraeus had ignored the corruption and human rights abuses allegedly occurring
within the training program for Iraqi security personnel. The report, approved by
the Army’s vice chief of staff, four-star Gen. Richard Cody, concluded that
“commands and commanders operated in an Iraqi cultural and ethical
environment often at odds with Western practices.” It said none of the unit
members “accepted institutional corruption or human rights abuses. Unit
members, and specifically [redacted name] and [redacted name] took appropriate
action where corruption or abuse was reported.”
The context, placement and relative size of the redacted names strongly suggest
that they refer to Petraeus and Fil.
Last November, Fil returned to Iraq. He is now the commanding general of the
Multinational Division in Baghdad and of the 1st Cavalry Division.
On February 12, Petraeus took command of all U.S. forces in Iraq. He now wears
four stars. And as in 2005, Petraeus’s main job in Iraq will be building up
beleaguered police and military. He made that point clear in a open letter to U.S.
soldiers and civilians serving in Iraq, which he had distributed on the day he took
command. His letter declared that, “Shoulder-to-shoulder with our Iraqi
comrades, we will conduct a pivotal campaign to improve security for the Iraqi
people. Together with our Iraqi partners, we must defeat those who oppose the
new Iraq.”
Austinite
Robert Bryce is an Observer contributing writer.