If you haven’t heard the full story of Alyssa Peterson, here is your chance to catch up. It isn’t a Fox-style fabrication like the Jessica Lynch tale, but a real-life examination of heroism of a soldier making the best of an untenable situation.
Alyssa Peterson was serving in Tal-Afar, in northwestern Iraq near the Syrian border. Following the Rumsfeld vocal command, her unit was directed to begin the use of a series of brutal, highly coercive techniques, likely including physical assaults on prisoners. Alyssa reacted to this with shock and she refused to participate. […] After this conflict with her command authority, Alyssa was given training for suicide watch and sent to supervise Iraqi guards. An investigation concluded that on the night of September 13, she committed suicide using her service rifle.
Whether or not she actually took her own life is, in the opinion of many, still an open question.
(Thanks to Andrew Sullivan for the tip.)
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