Skip to content or view mobile version

Home | Mobile | Editorial | Mission | Privacy | About | Contact | Help | Security | Support

A network of individuals, independent and alternative media activists and organisations, offering grassroots, non-corporate, non-commercial coverage of important social and political issues.

WikiLeaks: the largest classified military leak in history

WikiLeaks | 23.10.2010 08:37 | History | Iraq | Terror War | Sheffield | World

At 5pm EST Friday 22nd October 2010 WikiLeaks released the largest classified military leak in history. The 391,832 reports ('The Iraq War Logs'), document the war and occupation in Iraq, from 1st January 2004 to 31st December 2009 (except for the months of May 2004 and March 2009) as told by soldiers in the United States Army. Each is a 'SIGACT' or Significant Action in the war. They detail events as seen and heard by the US military troops on the ground in Iraq and are the first real glimpse into the secret history of the war that the United States government has been privy to throughout.

The reports detail 109,032 deaths in Iraq, comprised of 66,081 'civilians'; 23,984 'enemy' (those labeled as insurgents); 15,196 'host nation' (Iraqi government forces) and 3,771 'friendly' (coalition forces). The majority of the deaths (66,000, over 60%) of these are civilian deaths.That is 31 civilians dying every day during the six year period. For comparison, the 'Afghan War Diaries', previously released by WikiLeaks, covering the same period, detail the deaths of some 20,000 people. Iraq during the same period, was five times as lethal with equivallent population size.

WikiLeaks
- Homepage: http://wikileaks.org/

Additions

WikiLeaks releases documents exposing US war crimes in Iraq

25.10.2010 09:38

The secret US army files made public Friday by the WikiLeaks web site provide massive documentation of the criminal character of the US-led invasion and occupation of Iraq.

WikiLeaks posted nearly 400,000 army field reports, filed by low-ranking soldiers after combat or reconnaissance operations, describing the death tolls due to US military action, attacks by anti-US insurgents, or the internecine civil conflict sparked by the US occupation. The reports cover the period from January 1, 2004 to December 31, 2009, and therefore provide no data on the mass killings that took place during the initial US invasion in March 2003.

The documents were made available several weeks in advance to selected news organizations, including the Guardian in London, the New York Times, the German news magazine Der Spiegel, the French daily Le Monde, and al Jazeera, the Arabic-language broadcaster based in Qatar. These outlets published extensive accounts of the underlying material, posting them on their web sites Friday night.

The Guardian focuses on the scale of the bloodshed, including 15,000 civilians killed in incidents not previously reported by the US military—which publicly denied it was even counting civilian deaths, while keeping an extensive internal log. The newspaper’s report begins: “A grim picture of the US and Britain's legacy in Iraq has been revealed in a massive leak of American military documents that detail torture, summary executions and war crimes.”

The newspaper continues: “The war logs, seen by the Guardian, contain a horrific dossier of cases where US troops killed innocent civilians at checkpoints, on Iraq's roads and during raids on people's homes. The victims include dozens of women and children. The US rarely admitted their deaths publicly.”

The Guardian also details the failure of the US military to investigate torture and murder by the Iraqi forces recruited as part of the buildup of a puppet regime in Baghdad. The newspaper states: “Numerous reports of detainee abuse, often supported by medical evidence, describe prisoners shackled, blindfolded and hung by wrists or ankles and subjected to whipping, punching, kicking or electric shocks. Six reports end with a detainee’s apparent death.”

Another article in the Guardian draws attention to the role of the Wolf Brigade, an Iraqi special forces unit created by the US military and directed by Colonel James Steele, whose experience in counterinsurgency, torture and murder includes his role as an adviser to US-backed death squads in El Salvador during the 1980s.

According to the newspaper: “The Wolf Brigade was created and supported by the US in an attempt to re-employ elements of Saddam Hussein's Republican Guard, this time to terrorise insurgents. Members typically wore red berets, sunglasses and balaclavas, and drove out on raids in convoys of Toyota Landcruisers. They were accused by Iraqis of beating prisoners, torturing them with electric drills and sometimes executing suspects.”

The United Nations special rapporteur on torture, Manfred Nowak, told the BBC television program “Today” that the US government had an obligation to investigate the allegations that the American military handed prisoners over to Iraqi jailers for torture and execution, not only to “bring the perpetrators to justice, but also to provide the victims with adequate remedy and reparation.” Failure to do so, he said, would violate US obligations under international law.

This particular human rights violation is ongoing under the Obama administration, the documents confirm, with a report that the US military this past December received a video showing Iraqi army officers executing a prisoner in Tal Afar, in northern Iraq. According to the US army log, “The footage shows approximately 12 Iraqi army soldiers. Ten IA [Iraqi army] soldiers were talking to one another while two soldiers held the detainee. The detainee had his hands bound… The footage shows the IA soldiers moving the detainee into the street, pushing him to the ground, punching him and shooting him.”

The logs conclude that “no investigation is necessary,” because no US soldiers were involved in the torture and killing. This is a policy formally adopted by the US army in 2004 in a military order known as FRAG0 242.

The Guardian notes that the army reports, however grisly, significantly underestimate the death toll from US military action, even compared to the figures produced by Iraq Body Count (IBC), which are well below estimates, based on demographic studies, of a million or more Iraqis killed. The newspaper writes:

“A key example of the failure by US forces to record civilian casualties they have inflicted comes in the two major urban battles against insurgents fought in 2004 in Falluja. Numerous buildings were reduced to rubble by air strikes, tank shells and howitzers, and there were well-attested deaths of hundreds of civilians. IBC has identified between 1,226 and 1,362 such deaths during April and November. But the leaked US internal field reports record no civilian casualties at all.”

Both the Guardian and Der Spiegel published accounts of the casualties of all kinds inflicted during a single 24-hour period in the fall of 2006, the period of the most intense civil war, when sectarian killings of Sunni and Shiite civilians were at their peak. The Guardian chose October 17, 2006, when 146 were killed; Der Spiegel examined November 23, 2006, when 318 people died. Each gave the summary the title, “A Day in Hell.” No such material appears in the New York Times.

Both the Guardian and Der Spiegel draw attention to a particularly notorious incident in which an American Apache helicopter gunship trapped two insurgents, who attempted to surrender. When the pilot contacted his base for instructions, he was told by a military lawyer that “they can not surrender to aircraft and are still valid targets.” The two men fled but the copter hunted them down and strafed them, killing them.

In its analysis of the army reports, al Jazeera tabulated all the instances in which American soldiers shot and killed Iraqi civilians at checkpoints along the highways—arriving at a total of 681, many of them women and children. Many of these involved the massacre of entire families, with the worst involving 11 people in a van, including four children.

There is a stark difference between the approach taken by the European and Arab publications and that of the New York Times—largely echoed by the rest of the American media. The non-US publications all focus, quite correctly, on the horrific character of the bloodbath caused by the US-led invasion, and the importance of the material for documenting war crimes.

The Times seeks to draw attention away from the evidence of US government criminality, combining diversions—suggestions that the documents provide new evidence of the role of Iran in the events in Iraq—and secondary issues—a front-page examination of the role of private contractors—with a filthy smear campaign against WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange. (See “New York Times tries character assassination against WikiLeaks founder Assange”  http://wsws.org/articles/2010/oct2010/time-o25.shtml )

The American media in general combines vilification of WikiLeaks with efforts to downplay the significance of the material. The coverage in the Times and the Washington Post starts with the assertion that there is little new information in the army documents—an assessment that would seem to be contradicted by the shrill statements from the Pentagon and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton denouncing the exposé.

Another theme propounded by the American media is that the WikiLeaks material provides an argument for continuing the US military presence in Iraq, because it demonstrates that the Iraqi military and police, under the control of Prime Minister Maliki, is a lawless and criminal force.

Thus the Post writes: “But the logs are perhaps most disturbing in their portrayal of the Iraqi government that has taken control of security in the country as US forces withdraw.” And a Times article suggests that greater details on Kurdish-Arab conflicts in the north of Iraq could support keeping US forces there as peacekeepers.

Despite the censorship and distortion by the US media, the truth about the criminal nature of the US-led wars in Iraq and Afghanistan is reaching an ever-wider public. All over the world, the US government is regarded as imitating the methods of the Nazis, both in its violence and its systematic and shameless lying.

WikiLeaks has performed an immense public service. It has posted documents that are the raw material for a future war crimes prosecution of US presidents Barack Obama and George W. Bush and all of their top military, intelligence and foreign policy aides.

Patrick Martin
- Homepage: http://wsws.org/articles/2010/oct2010/wiki-o25.shtml


Comments

Display the following 13 comments

  1. Our genetics contains a happy, natural, alert and emergency materialism. — Praxis
  2. Fallujah War Crimes? — peace is war @ double speak . com
  3. Nicely managed 'Radical' journo stuff — anon
  4. Soros backed — insidejob
  5. Hypocrites — Dissatisfied
  6. SHAM — malc
  7. oh really? — stop the bullshit
  8. And the FBI is actually an alien conspiracy featuring Paris Hilton — Indymedia is FBI
  9. Soros and Wikileaks — insidejob
  10. insidejob = state asset? — anon
  11. online propaganda war — Krop
  12. Not real US war crimes? — insidejob
  13. re: Not real US war crimes? — anon
Upcoming Coverage
View and post events
Upcoming Events UK
24th October, London: 2015 London Anarchist Bookfair
2nd - 8th November: Wrexham, Wales, UK & Everywhere: Week of Action Against the North Wales Prison & the Prison Industrial Complex. Cymraeg: Wythnos o Weithredu yn Erbyn Carchar Gogledd Cymru

Ongoing UK
Every Tuesday 6pm-8pm, Yorkshire: Demo/vigil at NSA/NRO Menwith Hill US Spy Base More info: CAAB.

Every Tuesday, UK & worldwide: Counter Terror Tuesdays. Call the US Embassy nearest to you to protest Obama's Terror Tuesdays. More info here

Every day, London: Vigil for Julian Assange outside Ecuadorian Embassy

Parliament Sq Protest: see topic page
Ongoing Global
Rossport, Ireland: see topic page
Israel-Palestine: Israel Indymedia | Palestine Indymedia
Oaxaca: Chiapas Indymedia
Regions
All Regions
Birmingham
Cambridge
Liverpool
London
Oxford
Sheffield
South Coast
Wales
World
Other Local IMCs
Bristol/South West
Nottingham
Scotland
Social Media
You can follow @ukindymedia on indy.im and Twitter. We are working on a Twitter policy. We do not use Facebook, and advise you not to either.
Support Us
We need help paying the bills for hosting this site, please consider supporting us financially.
Other Media Projects
Schnews
Dissident Island Radio
Corporate Watch
Media Lens
VisionOnTV
Earth First! Action Update
Earth First! Action Reports
Topics
All Topics
Afghanistan
Analysis
Animal Liberation
Anti-Nuclear
Anti-militarism
Anti-racism
Bio-technology
Climate Chaos
Culture
Ecology
Education
Energy Crisis
Fracking
Free Spaces
Gender
Globalisation
Health
History
Indymedia
Iraq
Migration
Ocean Defence
Other Press
Palestine
Policing
Public sector cuts
Repression
Social Struggles
Technology
Terror War
Workers' Movements
Zapatista
Major Reports
NATO 2014
G8 2013
Workfare
2011 Census Resistance
Occupy Everywhere
August Riots
Dale Farm
J30 Strike
Flotilla to Gaza
Mayday 2010
Tar Sands
G20 London Summit
University Occupations for Gaza
Guantanamo
Indymedia Server Seizure
COP15 Climate Summit 2009
Carmel Agrexco
G8 Japan 2008
SHAC
Stop Sequani
Stop RWB
Climate Camp 2008
Oaxaca Uprising
Rossport Solidarity
Smash EDO
SOCPA
Past Major Reports
Encrypted Page
You are viewing this page using an encrypted connection. If you bookmark this page or send its address in an email you might want to use the un-encrypted address of this page.
If you recieved a warning about an untrusted root certificate please install the CAcert root certificate, for more information see the security page.

Global IMC Network


www.indymedia.org

Projects
print
radio
satellite tv
video

Africa

Europe
antwerpen
armenia
athens
austria
barcelona
belarus
belgium
belgrade
brussels
bulgaria
calabria
croatia
cyprus
emilia-romagna
estrecho / madiaq
galiza
germany
grenoble
hungary
ireland
istanbul
italy
la plana
liege
liguria
lille
linksunten
lombardia
madrid
malta
marseille
nantes
napoli
netherlands
northern england
nottingham imc
paris/île-de-france
patras
piemonte
poland
portugal
roma
romania
russia
sardegna
scotland
sverige
switzerland
torun
toscana
ukraine
united kingdom
valencia

Latin America
argentina
bolivia
chiapas
chile
chile sur
cmi brasil
cmi sucre
colombia
ecuador
mexico
peru
puerto rico
qollasuyu
rosario
santiago
tijuana
uruguay
valparaiso
venezuela

Oceania
aotearoa
brisbane
burma
darwin
jakarta
manila
melbourne
perth
qc
sydney

South Asia
india


United States
arizona
arkansas
asheville
atlanta
Austin
binghamton
boston
buffalo
chicago
cleveland
colorado
columbus
dc
hawaii
houston
hudson mohawk
kansas city
la
madison
maine
miami
michigan
milwaukee
minneapolis/st. paul
new hampshire
new jersey
new mexico
new orleans
north carolina
north texas
nyc
oklahoma
philadelphia
pittsburgh
portland
richmond
rochester
rogue valley
saint louis
san diego
san francisco
san francisco bay area
santa barbara
santa cruz, ca
sarasota
seattle
tampa bay
united states
urbana-champaign
vermont
western mass
worcester

West Asia
Armenia
Beirut
Israel
Palestine

Topics
biotech

Process
fbi/legal updates
mailing lists
process & imc docs
tech