another female soldier comments on Peterson's suicide over torture

[donsu]

http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/columns/pressingissues_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1003352534

Part II: A Suicide in Iraq
Alyssa Peterson, 27, killed herself in Iraq after protesting "interrogation techniques." Now another female soldier who met her a week before she died -- and who also objected to certain interrogations in Iraq -- comments.


They served in the same battalion in Iraq at the same time. Kayla Williams spoke with Alyssa Peterson about the young woman's troubles a week before she died -- and afterward, attended her memorial service. Williams even has her own interrogation horror story to tell. So what, in Williams ' view, caused Alyssa Peterson to put a bullet in her head in September 2003 after just a few weeks in Iraq?

-snip-

In the book and in interviews at that time, Williams, now 29 and out of the Army, described how she had been recruited to briefly take part in over-the-line interrogations. Like Peterson, she protested torture techniques -- such as throwing lit cigarettes at prisoners -- and was quickly shifted away, but in her case, she survived. But she told me Friday that she is still haunted by the experience and wonders if she objected strongly enough. She also wonders if she could have done more to help Alyssa Peterson after their brief chat just before she died.

-snip-

Soldiers later told her that "the old rules no longer applied because this was a different world. This was a new kind of war."

-snip-

Yet, after recounting her experience In Mosul, she asks: "Can that lead to suicide? That's such an act of desperation, helplessness, it has to be more than that." She concludes, "In general, interrogation is not fun, even if you follow the rules. And I didn't see any good intelligence being gained. The other problem is that, in situations like that, you have people that are not terrorists being picked up, and being questioned. And, if you treat an innocent person like that, they walk out a terrorist."

Or, maybe in this case, if an innocent person witnesses such a thing, some may walk out as a likely suicide.
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america, the country that tortures

[yellerpup]

1. After the trial

we should set the chickenhawks down in the desert without armor, without backup, with substandard equipment, and polluted water and let them fight their way out.

[deaniac21]

5. Or form a circle and throw lit cigarettes at them.

[yellerpup]

7. Any little thing to make the "war experience" authentic for them

Maybe we could have them remind us of the exact definition of torture. (as in: if you're not dead yet, then it isn't torture) Lit cigarettes would be a diversion from waterboarding.

[AndyTiedye]

2. Alyssa Was Most Likely Murdered to Keep Her Quiet

[Nothing Without Hope]

3. How strong is the evidence that Peterson's death was actually suicide?

I'll assume the possibility of murder until it's proved otherwise.

[w4rma]

4. You aren't "asked" to do things in the military. You are *ordered* to do things.

"But what was Alyssa asked to do in the interrogation "cage" and why did she protest?"

[AntiFascist]

6. Sounds like just another way for BushCo to generate terrorists n/t

[cassiepriam]

8. Suicide? I don't think so............ nt