By T. Christian Miller, Times Staff Writer
"War is the hardest place to make moral judgments."
Col. Ted Westhusing, Journal of Military Ethics

WASHINGTON — One hot, dusty day in June, Col. Ted Westhusing was found dead in a trailer at a military base near the Baghdad airport, a single gunshot wound to the head.

The Army would conclude that he committed suicide with his service pistol. At the time, he was the highest-ranking officer to die in Iraq.

The Army closed its case. But the questions surrounding Westhusing's death continue.

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.

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upset by one conclusion he had reached: that traditional military values such as duty, honor and country had been replaced by profit motives in Iraq, where the U.S. had come to rely heavily on contractors for jobs once done by the military.

His death stunned all who knew him. Colleagues and commanders wondered whether they had missed signs of depression. He had been losing weight and not sleeping well. But only a day before his death, Westhusing won praise from a senior officer for his progress in training Iraqi police.

In honor of OlyBlog reaching 100, I propose we pool our resources and open a Caiman Cuisine enterprise. This is a handy solution to the caiman problem: we will control the population, feed people, and make money all at the same time. Plus, the publicity will be fantastic.

I suggest we set up a factory right at the lake edge, for ease of transport and efficiency. Any citizens who complain can be fed to the caimans.

Our first product can be vacumn packed frozen cuts of caiman meat:

Tails (Tail fillet and Tail eye)
Ribs
Backstrap
Leg meat (bone out)
Jowls
Neck fillets
Mixed meat

(Caiman Meat Products)

Olyblog has reached a milestone: 100 Olympians have registered for an account, and participated in this forum. Whooohooo!

Our hundreth user is: hteeth. Read hteeth's post -- he/she is looking for a place to live.

From the Appelton Post-Crescent:

This time the bait that hooked me were two beers from Fish Brewing Co. of Olympia, Wash., named Fish Tale Leviathan Barleywine-Style Ale and Fish Tale Poseidon’s Imperial Stout. By the time I discovered these denizens of the deep the day before, I was already rocking the boat from prior sampling and knew I would have to wait a day to sample them.

Why they went the extra mile to call Leviathan a barleywine-style ale I’m not sure, since it was more in line with traditional English barleywines than American counterparts.

It was a dark copper color, with a beautiful hop nose, slightly sweet malt and a bitterness to match the 8 percent alcohol strength. There is no alcohol bite, though. You can really tell the difference that appropriate aging makes. The carbonation was light — appropriate for the style.

The label noted that it was bottled in November 2004, a nice touch to let the consumer know how long it’s been aging.

Articles like this inflate my already-too-large sense of moral authority. From the Tacoma News Tribune:

Melissa Paulson admits she feels a bit smug as she drives past gas stations on the way to the public biodiesel station in Fife to top off the tank of her Volkswagen Jetta Wagon.

[snip]

Even before gas prices approached $3 a gallon in the Puget Sound area this fall, consumers already had given hybrid and alternative fuel cars a firm foothold in Washington that experts say will only become more established in the future.

In fact, alternative fuel technologies – hybrid, biodiesel, natural gas and ethanol – have traded in their geek status and are now nibbling away at the market share of fossil fuels. U.S. market share for these technologies might bloom from the fraction they represent now to 30 percent in the next few years, according to several analysts.

I realize the op-ed I'm about to cite comes from Fox News (and, if you're even more familiar, the author is from the CATO Insitute), so you're more than welcome to dismiss.

I dismiss most of the material from CommonDreams, though I wouldn't equate the two in my mind. Maybe I'll post my thoughts on Fox News in another blog entry but that time is not now.

Keeping on track, here's some excerpts:

"The Democrats who are condemning President Bush hope that we will forget about their passive role on the U.S. military mission in Bosnia. Much to their chagrin, however, this month marks the tenth anniversary of the Balkans undertaking — so it is worth recalling how that mission got underway. President Clinton announced the deployment of troops in a nationally televised address. Mr. Clinton said this mission would be 'precisely defined with clear realistic goals' that could be achieved in a 'definite period of time.'"

"Throughout the 1996 election year, the Clinton administration led voters to believe that it would adhere to the one-year deadline. Even on the eve of the election, in late October 1996, State Department spokesperson Nicholas Burns adamantly denied that there were any changes in the Clinton plan to withdraw 15,000 American soldiers from Bosnia that December. As far as the voters were concerned, Bosnia was a non-issue — especially since the Republican presidential candidate, Bob Dole, failed to express any interest in prolonging the military mission."

And what ended up happening?

"'Quite frankly,' the president declared, the 'rebuilding process' was taking longer than anticipated. And because of that unexpected delay, thousands of U.S. troops would have to remain in Bosnia — not just for a few extra weeks, not just for another year, but for an additional 18 months. And, note well, that Mr. Clinton did not dismiss his secretary of defense because of poor planning. Mr. Clinton spoke matter-of-factly and made it seem as if this lamentable extension of the mission resulted from an honest error in his own judgment."

I was just reading an article entitled "A Continent of Broken Windows," by Gerard Alexander, associate professor of politics at the University of Virginia. The piece was written following the riots in France, detailing a rise in European violence in comparison to the United States and the common misconception that Europe is the land where the Care Bears are from and America is home to The Warriors.

At any rate, here's what I found interesting:

"The latest [crime] figures, scattered from 2000 to 2005, suggest that more assaults are committed per capita in England than in America, while Swedes, Norwegians, and Dutch experience roughly the same assault rates as Americans. Robberies (which involve force or the threat of force) are as common in England and the Netherlands as in the United States."

"Moreover, some European cities suffer certain crimes that Americans don't know at all. As the New York Times understatedly observed, the French government was slow to respond to the recent riots 'in part because the initial nights of unrest did not seem particularly unusual in a country where an average of more than 80 cars a day were set on fire this year even before' the riots began."

Yikes! And the murder rate?

"America is even losing its distinctiveness among the advanced industrial countries when it comes to murder, as European homicide rates edge upward. Twenty and thirty years ago, Europeans experienced a tiny fraction of U.S. murder rates, and individual murders were still shocking. By 2001, though, Amsterdam, Stockholm, Vienna, and Brussels were suffering 40 percent or more the homicide rate that New York City has today."

To be sure, a homicide rate that is half of one city is pretty significant. The article is pointing out, however, that violence is in the U.S. has either leveled off or declined while Europe has been experiencing an increase. Will the increase continue? Who is to say? It's certainly worth examining, though.