[Sosfbay-discuss] Ted Westhusing

[Tian Harter]

I don't remember reading or hearing about Ted Westhusing before
seeing the email forwarded below. Had you heard about the story?

I remember hearing somebody say Joan Baez said back during Vietnam
days "there are causes worth dying for, but there are no causes worth
killing for." In that spirit, I was wondering why the guy didn't come back
and become a peace activist.

Tian

Gerry Gras wrote:

>
> I googled "Ted Westhusing". Most matches were from websites
> I did not recognize. But the first 100 matches included
> - Huffington Post
> - NPR
> - Boston Globe
> - Texas Observer
> - ZNet
> - CNN
> - Truthout
> - Al Jazeera
> - Tom Dispatch ("a project of the Nation Institute")
> - Houston Chronicle
> - amazon.com
>
>
> Gerry
>
>
>
>
>
> Tian Harter wrote:
>
>> I recieved the following from Per in response to my last email.
>> It was so readable I had to share it:
>>
>>> Re. Iraq, have you heard of Ted Westhusing? He was an
>>> Army Colonel; a real achiever. West Point, Airborne
>>> and Ranger school, taught at West Point, learned
>>> Italian and Russian, real gung-ho super-patriot.
>>> Believed Iraq was a just war and went out of his way
>>> to convince people of it.
>>> Then he got a chance to go to Iraq, to work with US
>>> contractors and train Iraqi security forces. It was a
>>> six-month stint. A month before he was due to return
>>> he apparently committed suicide, leaving a letter that
>>> complained about the corruption amongst money-grabbing
>>> US contractors, lack of support from the higher-ups,
>>> and the complete, over failure of the mission, and a
>>> few other things too.
>>> This guy was a highly idealistic person, so I guess
>>> the shock just completely brought his view of life
>>> tumbling down. He had a wife and three small children.
>>>
>>> It happened June, 2005. I've not seen much in the
>>> media about this. He was the highest ranking soldier
>>> to have died in Iraq at the time.
>>> Even if he didn't sound like a person I would
>>> particularly like, it's a, bloody waste of a human
>>> life...
>>> Here's the whole story:
>>>
>> http://www.texasobserver.org/article.php?aid=2440
>>
>>
>
>
>


-- 
Tian
We got great coverage for our protest in Los Gatos Saturday:
http://losgatosobserver.com/los-gatos/Article.php?article_id=0226