This is about the often unmentioned human cost of torture to the society that commits the torture, and to the soldiers who fight in illegal wars.
The third female US soldier to have died in Iraq turns out to have committed suicide after she refused to participate in torture and received a reprimand for showing empathy to the person being tortured. The Pentagon covered up the cause of death and even the parents didn't know until a journalist uncovered the truth.
How many US soldiers are walking around with horrible psychological damage from being pressured to participate in torture, or to participate in such a morally wrong war in the first place? Deaths of US soldiers in Iraq from suicide may exceed those from combat. Pat Tillman, the NFL quarterback who enlisted in the military after 9/11 and was killed in Iraq, was a prime example of a person who signed up to serve his country, only to find himself in a war that he knew was illegal. His story may shed light on the rise in suicides in the US military.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/us-interpreter-who-witnessed-torture-in-iraq-shot-herself-with-service-rifle-1674399.html
Tillman http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2005/09/25/MNGD7ETMNM1.DTL
suicides vs. combat deaths www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601124&refer=home&sid=a2_71Klo2vig
edit: fixed quotes
The third female US soldier to have died in Iraq turns out to have committed suicide after she refused to participate in torture and received a reprimand for showing empathy to the person being tortured. The Pentagon covered up the cause of death and even the parents didn't know until a journalist uncovered the truth.
How many US soldiers are walking around with horrible psychological damage from being pressured to participate in torture, or to participate in such a morally wrong war in the first place? Deaths of US soldiers in Iraq from suicide may exceed those from combat. Pat Tillman, the NFL quarterback who enlisted in the military after 9/11 and was killed in Iraq, was a prime example of a person who signed up to serve his country, only to find himself in a war that he knew was illegal. His story may shed light on the rise in suicides in the US military.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/us-interpreter-who-witnessed-torture-in-iraq-shot-herself-with-service-rifle-1674399.html
| Quote: |
|
US interpreter who witnessed torture in Iraq shot herself with service rifle It is possible that one of the victims of the United States' torture policy is a young, devout Mormon woman from Arizona called Alyssa Peterson. She was a soldier who not only saw the rough interrogation methods that the US military used on Iraqi prisoners, but was deeply troubled by them. Some weeks after formally protesting about them to her superiors, and asking to be reassigned, she took her gun and killed herself. The cause of her death was kept secret for two years, and the mystery of what Peterson witnessed, and the content of the notes she made, still goes on. It was in September 2003 at Tal-Afar air base, northern Iraq, that Specialist Peterson, serving with a military intelligence section of the 101st Airborne, came across interrogation methods very different from the ones she had known in training. An Arab-speaker, Peterson was assigned to work as an interpreter at interrogation sessions in a unit known as "The Cage". After only two nights, she refused to take further part in the sessions and was reassigned. Then, on 15 September, she shot herself with her service rifle. A notebook recording her thoughts was found by her body. Its contents were blanked out in the subsequent official report. Her family, in Flagstaff, Arizona, were told she had died from a "non-hostile weapons discharge". It was only after an Arizona reporter, Kevin Elston, investigated, that the army revealed Peterson had killed herself. They refused to say what interrogation she objected to, and maintain that all documents relating to methods used at Tal-Afar have been destroyed. |
Tillman http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2005/09/25/MNGD7ETMNM1.DTL
suicides vs. combat deaths www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601124&refer=home&sid=a2_71Klo2vig
edit: fixed quotes
