Alyssa Renee Peterson (February 29, 1976 – September 15, 2003) was a United States Army soldier, with Arabic language certification, who served with C Company, 311th Military Intelligence Battalion, 101st Airborne in Iraq.

Peterson graduated from Northern Arizona University, after which she enlisted in the U.S. Army and attended the Defense Language Institute in California, where she learned Arabic.

[1] Radioed into the Tactical Operations Center at 0900 on September 16, an unidentified aircraft reported visual sighting of a body near the Third Brigade Landing Zone (LZ).

[2] After further investigation, it was determined that on September 15, 2003, Alyssa Peterson died from a "non-combat weapons discharge" at the Tal Afar airbase on the Syrian-Iraqi frontier.

[3] According to a report into the investigation into her death: We told her that you have to be able to turn on and off the interrogation mode -- that you act differently towards the people we meet with outside of the detainee facility," one fellow soldier stated.