Col. Ann Wright on Jay Bybee and the Death of U.S. Army Specialist Alyssa Peterson

Alyssa Peterson is dead for saying no to torture. Bybee, who said yes to torture, is a federal judge with a lifetime appointment

By Jeremy Scahill

Col. Ann Wright, the courageous former Army officer and US diplomat who resigned in protest of the Bush administration’s wars has written an important story looking at two Mormons, Jay Bybee, author of one of the recently declassified torture memos and US Army Spcecialist Alyssa Peterson who resisted the torture tactics Bybee attempted to legalize and justify. As Wright points out, “The torture techniques Bybee authorized in 2002 migrated to Iraq in 2003” where Peterson was working at the time:

In September 2003, another Mormon, a woman soldier U.S. Army Specialist Alyssa Peterson, said she refused to use the interrogation techniques Bybee had authorized on Iraqi prisoners. An Arabic linguist with the U.S. Army’s 101st Airborne Division at Tal Afar base, Iraq, 27-year-old Peterson refused to take part in interrogations in the “cage” where Iraqis were stripped naked in front of female soldiers, mocked and their manhood degraded and burned with cigarettes, among other things. Three days later, on September 15, 2003, Peterson was found dead of a gunshot wound at Tal Afar base. The Army has classified her death as suicide.

Jay Bybee, in thanks for his being the loyal soldier to the Bush administration’s policies of torture, was nominated and confirmed by the U.S. Senate as a judge on the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, where he sits to this day in his lifetime appointment. Jay Bybee, an author of torture, reportedly has a placard in his home for his children “We don’t hurt each other.”

Alyssa Peterson, for saying no to torture, is dead, perhaps by her own hand.

To help Alyssa Peterson rest in peace, I say we should demand accountability from our officials and impeach the torture judge, Jay Bybee.

Read Col. Ann Wright’s full story here.

Read about her book and work here.