Alyssa Peterson (1976-2003)

By John Ballard

Alyssa Peterson was born a month before my first-born but she never saw her twenty-eighth birthday. Serving in Iraq with an intelligence unit, 101st Airborne, she killed herself rather than take part in torture.
This is not a new story. Nor in the long, nasty shadow of the seven years since her death is it remarkable, either from the standpoint of suicides among military personnel or torture, both of which have become regular features on the reporting landscape. 

Another two-part remembrance in The Nation by Greg Mitchell tells the story.

Spc. Alyssa Peterson was one of the first female soldiers who died in Iraq. Her death under these circumstances should have drawn wide attention. It's not exactly the Tillman case, but a cover-up, naturally, followed.

Peterson, 27, a Flagstaff, Ariz., native, served with C Company, 311th Military Intelligence BN, 101st Airborne. She was a valuable Arabic-speaking interrogator assigned to the prison at our air base in troubled Tal Afar in northwestern Iraq. According to official records, she died on Sept. 15, 2003, from a "non-hostile weapons discharge."

A "non-hostile weapons discharge" leading to death is not unusual in Iraq, often quite accidental, so this one apparently raised few eyebrows. The Arizona Republic, three days after her death, reported that Army officials "said that a number of possible scenarios are being considered, including Peterson's own weapon discharging, the weapon of another soldier discharging, or the accidental shooting of Peterson by an Iraqi civilian." And that might have ended it right there.

But in this case, a longtime radio and newspaper reporter named Kevin Elston, not satisfied with the public story, decided to probe deeper in 2005, "just on a hunch," he told me in late 2006. He made "hundreds of phone calls" to the military and couldn't get anywhere, so he filed a Freedom of Information Act [FOIA] request. When the documents of the official investigation of her death arrived, they contained bombshell revelations.

Here's what the Flagstaff public radio station, KNAU, where Elston worked, reported: "Peterson objected to the interrogation techniques used on prisoners. She refused to participate after only two nights working in the unit known as the cage. Army spokespersons for her unit have refused to describe the interrogation techniques Alyssa objected to. They say all records of those techniques have now been destroyed."

The official probe of her death would later note that earlier she had been "reprimanded" for showing "empathy" for the prisoners. One of the most moving parts of the report, in fact, is this: "She said that she did not know how to be two people; she ... could not be one person in the cage and another outside the wire."

A few readers may not recall this story and can read the details at the link.

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I followed the Alyssa Peterson story when it first became known and later when the presidential campaign got underway. I was one of those "Silly hope-drunk Lefties" Naomi Klein referred to yesterday. Like many others I was intoxicated by false expectations of Barack Obama. This is what I wrote in April, 2009..

[First published November 3, 2006 and reposted last year. This post is part of the reason that I am enthusiastic about Barack Obama. His principled opposition to the war in Iraq, all that I have read by and about him, make me believe that tawdry stories like these would not be swept under the rug if he were president.**
The deaths of Alyssa Peterson and Ted Westhusing are tragic reminders of the moral bankruptcy of the Iraq adventure. With the torture issue again in the news, the Alyssa Peterson story is again timely. Here is what I collected several years ago.]

**Boy, was I wrong about that!

My post included links to and quotes from to the original story as well as links to an eerily similar story about Col. Ted Westhusing.

These two tragedies were awful enough at the time, but among the thousands of dead and wounded victims of this never-ending war and another one in Afghanistan they seem almost mundane. You can be certain that their deaths and those of thousands of others will never be regarded as mundane by their families and those who knew them.

There is no good reason to dredge up my disappointment with the Obama presidency other than to repeat my old tag-line.
I would rather be an optimist and be wrong...
which I was and no doubt will be again.