What Are They Fighting For?

A tragic story that highlights another cost of the White House's torture policy- the mental impact on our soldiers ordered to carry out these 'alternative interrogations'. After all, this isn't likely what they signed up for...

Arizona Daily Star: Report: Flagstaff soldier killed self after protest

A Flagstaff soldier who died in Iraq committed suicide after she refused to participate in interrogation techniques being practiced by her U.S. Army intelligence unit, according to a report about an Army investigation aired by a Flagstaff radio station.

U.S. Army Spc. Alyssa R. Peterson, 27, died Sept. 15, 2003, in Tel Afar, an Iraqi city of about 350,000 residents in the northern part of the country.

At the time, the U.S. Department of Defense listed her cause of death as a "noncombat weapons discharge."...

...Spc. Peterson had been assigned to C Company, 311th Military Intelligence Battalion, 101st Airborne Division (Air Assault), which is based in Fort Campbell, Ky. She was in Iraq as part of Operation Iraqi Freedon, functioning as an Arabic-speaking intelligence specialist.

On Tuesday, a KNAU Public Radio reporter, who had filed a Freedom of Information Act request for the reports of the criminal investigation into Peterson's death, aired a report that Peterson had committed suicide.

According to KNAU, an Army investigation found that Peterson had objected to interrogation techniques that were being used on prisoners.

"She refused to participate after only two nights working in the unit known as the cage," stated the KNAU report.

She was subsequently assigned to monitoring Iraqi guards at the base gate and was sent to suicide prevention training, stated the KNAU report. And on Sept. 15, Army investigators concluded she shot and killed herself with her service rifle, according to KNAU.

The KNAU report also stated that Army spokespeople for Peterson's unit refused to describe the interrogation techniques and that all records of the techniques have been destroyed...

Is this what we're fighting for? Is the army that Bush, Cheney, and Rumsfeld have created with their madness? In 3 days, we can register our verdict of all on this. We can make our voices heard.

3 more days...

[PS- Neoconservativism normally means never having to say you're sorry... but three former warmongers neocon White House allies, and architects of the Iraq invasion, are throwing in the towel. Richard Perle, Kenneth Adelman, and David Frum discuss with Vanity Fair watching their pet project fail all around them, throw Bush under the bus, and say they wish they could take it all back. Maybe.

And speaking of getting thrown under the bus, an editorial set to be published on Monday in top military papers (Army Times, Air Force Times, Navy Times and Marine Corps Times) calls for the resignation of Sec. Rumsfeld. The article begins with the following quote first-uttered by a Pulitzer Prize-winning war correspondent during the Korean War: "So long as our government requires the backing of an aroused and informed public opinion ... it is necessary to tell the hard bruising truth." Agreed. But where have you been for the past 3.5 years?

Finally, as if on cue, Vice President Cheney says it's full speed ahead on the war.

UPDATE: These are two concurrent headlines on Drudge right now-

CIVIL WAR MAY FOLLOW SADDAM DEATH VERDICT...
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CHENEY: ELECTION RESULTS WILL NOT CAUSE CHANGE OF DIRECTION IN IRAQ; 'FULL SPEED AHEAD'...

Unintentionally says it all, in my opinion.]