Colonel Ted Westhusing's suicide note in Iraq included the sentence, “I didn't volunteer to support corrupt, money-grubbing contractors.” The Army psychologist who reviewed Westhusing's case concluded that the colonel was unable to cope with the concept of corporate profit making. Those who knew Westhusing do not agree with her report. He was not anti-corporations or anti-capitalism. He understood and appreciated the profit motive that drives the business world. His complaint was widespread corruption, outright theft and fraud in the dealings between corporations and the military in Iraq, the way that American corporate contractors with multimillion dollar no-bid contracts were dominating the conduct of the war, and the role that the regular military forces were playing in country and especially behind the wire. He hinted that Army officers at the highest ranks were complicit in the shady activities of the contractors. In Colonel Westhusing's opinion, the way the war was being conducted with the collusion of the Pentagon corrupted the mission and transformed the U.S. military into an ancillary operation for the enrichment of American corporations and their executives. In his suicide note, he did not name the contractors he regarded as the most egregious offenders, but there is good reason from his experiences in and around Camp Dublin to include Blackwater and KBR among his targets.

KBR (formerly Kellogg, Brown, and Root), a subsidiary of Halliburton from 1962 until 2007, had more than 20,000 employees in Iraq providing all sorts of services and support for the American troops. During the Bush administration's tenure, KBR was frequently under Congressional and General Accounting Office investigation because its very close relationship with highly placed members of the administration, including Vice President Dick Cheney, the former CEO of Halliburton, cast doubt on the propriety of the size of its contracts with the Department of Defense (said to be in the $30 billion range) and the fact that many were no-bid arrangements. KBR was accused of inflating the prices it charged to the military for all manner of products and services, human trafficking, and shoddy workmanship. KBR set up at least two shell companies in the Cayman Islands that it admits were created only to avoid paying hundreds of millions of dollars annually in U.S. taxes for Medicare and Social Security. Most KBR employees in Iraq are listed as employees of those shell companies that list their home offices in Ugland House, a five-storey nondescript building on South Church Street in Grand Cayman that miraculously houses 12,748 corporations. Among the many charges against KBR related to work for which it was contracted by the Department of Defense is the shoddy electrical work in buildings housing soldiers and Marines, where eighteen or more electrocutions have occurred.