[quote=CNN]The whistle-blower website WikiLeaks published classified military documents from the war in Iraq in a release Friday that was anticipated to include 400,000 such documents.
The latest round of leaked documents provides a new picture of how many Iraqi civilians have been killed, a new window on the role that Iran has played in supporting Iraqi militants and many accounts of abuse by Iraqi's army and police, according to The New York Times.
The Times was one of a handful of news organizations that was provided early access to the papers.
According to new documents, the vast majority of slain civilians were killed by other Iraqis.
The U.S. military is in the process of notifying Iraqis named in the documents, Pentagon Press Secretary Geoff Morrell told CNN on Friday
There are 300 Iraqis named in the documents whose safety is of particular concern, he said.
A group of 120 Department of Defense experts has been poring over hundreds of thousands of "Significant Action Reports" that they expected to be posted to the WikiLeaks website.
The Defense Department had not previously warned Iraqi civilians who have cooperated with the United States that their names may be posted on the internet.
"We don't want to start notifying people and then find out that their names aren't in any of these documents that are released," Col. David Lapan, a top Pentagon spokesman, said earlier Friday. "Why put people through the trouble and the concern for no reason?"
The Pentagon denounced the documents' release on Friday.
"This is all classified secret information never designed to be exposed to the public," Morrell told CNN. "Our greatest fear is that it puts our troops in even greater danger than they inherently are on these battlefields. That it will expose tactics, techniques and procedures -- how they operate on the battlefield, how they respond under attack, the capabilities of our equipment ... how we cultivate sources (and) how we work with Iraqis."
He added, "It also includes the names of thousands of Iraqis, 300 of whom we believe are particularly vulnerable in light of this exposure, and we have notified CentCom and U.S. forces Iraq so that they could then be in touch with those Iraqis and take measures to try to safeguard them in the wake of this exposure."
After a similar release of 77,000 classified from the war in Afghanistan, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Adm. Mike Mullen said WikiLeaks "might already have on their hands the blood of some young soldier or that of an Afghan family."
Friday, Lapan said they know of no case where anyone in Afghanistan had been harmed because their name was in the leaked documents, but he made clear that doesn't mean such people couldn't be killed in the future.
The documents detail Iran's role in supplying Iraqi militia fighters with weapons, including the most lethal type of roadside bomb.
Field reports released Friday assert that Iraqi militants traveled to Iran for training as snipers and in using explosives, according to the Times. Iran's Quds Force urged Iraqi extremists it was working with to kill Iraqi officials, the Times reported.
CNN was offered access to the documents in advance of the release but declined because of conditions that were attached to accepting the material.
According to an analysis by the Guardian, a British newspaper, the documents detail torture, summary executions and war crimes.
U.S. authorities failed to investigate hundreds of reports of abuse, torture, rape and murder by Iraqi police and soldiers, the documents show, according to the Guardian.
The Times said that hundreds of reports of beatings, burnings and lashings suggested that "such treatment was not an exception." Most abuse cases contained in the new batch of leaks appear to have been ultimately ignored, the paper said.
The Times said that military rules require forces to report abuse to Iraqi authorities, but suggested that there was little follow-up on abuse reports.
The group Iraq Body Count said that the new documents reveal 15,000 previously unknown civilian deaths, raising the group's civilian death toll to 122,000.
"It's the largest single addition to our database since we began it," the anti-war group's co-founder, John Sloboda, told CNN.
WikiLeaks Editor-in-Chief Julian Assange told CNN in an exclusive interview Friday that the new round of field reports shows "compelling evidence of war crimes" committed by forces of the U.S.-led coalition and the Iraqi government.
WikiLeaks called Friday's document drop "the largest classified military leak in history."
In a news release, the group said the documents detail 109,032 deaths in Iraq, encompassing 66,081 civilians, 23,984 insurgents, 15,196 Iraqi government forces and 3,771 coalition forces, according to the classifications used by the U.S. military.
Assange said the documents contained more than 1,000 reports on the torture or abuse of detainees by Iraqi government forces and that he expects that 40 wrongful death lawsuits will be filed as a result of the new leaks.
He dismissed concerns that the publication of the documents could endanger U.S. troops and Iraqi civilians, asserting that the Pentagon "cannot find a single person that has been harmed" due to WikiLeaks' previous release of 76,000 pages of documents related to the U.S.-led war in Afghanistan.
"We strongly condemn the unauthorized disclosure of classified information and will not comment on these leaked documents other than to note that 'significant activities' reports are initial, raw observations by tactical units," the Department of Defense said in a Friday statement. "They are essentially snapshots of events, both tragic and mundane, and do not tell the whole story. That said, the period covered by these reports has been well-chronicled in news stories, books and films and the release of these field reports does not bring new understanding to Iraq's past.
"However, it does expose secret information that could make our troops even more vulnerable to attack in the future," the statement continued. "Just as with the leaked Afghan documents, we know our enemies will mine this information looking for insights into how we operate, cultivate sources, and react in combat situations, even the capability of our equipment. This security breach could very well get our troops and those they are fighting with killed."
Former U.S. Ambassador to Iraq Ryan Crocker said this week he is concerned for the safety of the Iraqis who may be mentioned.
"What I'd really be worried about in this context, we're not fighting a hot war," Crocker said in remarks at the Center for Strategic and International Studies on Tuesday. "It's not the same set of issues in Afghanistan, although there may be some carryover. I'd really be worried if, as looks to be the case, you have Iraqi political figures named in a context or a connection that can make them politically and physically vulnerable to their adversaries.
"It just has an utterly chilling effect on the willingness of political figures to talk to us, not just in Iraq, anywhere in the world. And I think a hugely irresponsible step on the part of WikiLeaks. Just in a different sense than we saw in Afghanistan, this too is going to put lives at risk needlessly and irresponsibly."[/quote]
Source: [url]http://www.cnn.com/2010/US/10/22/wikileaks.iraq/index.html?hpt=T1[/url]
incoming "hang assange for treason ppl r gonna die"
Incoming shitstorm.
Heard about this a few hours ago, I hope it'll change stuff but it probably won't.
I got a late rating. Was this already posted? I didn't see it.
Well, this doesn't seem worth the hype. I mean, it really was barely worth the US worrying so much about it.
[quote]According to new documents, the vast majority of slain civilians were killed by other Iraqis. [/quote]
[QUOTE=wuzzimu;25577749]Well, this doesn't seem worth the hype. I mean, it really was barely worth the US worrying so much about it.[/QUOTE]
Very True
[QUOTE=JDK721v5;25577733]I got a late rating. Was this already posted? I didn't see it.[/QUOTE]
I don't think there was, it was just a few hours old.
I could have sworn that what wikileaks is doing is completely, and totally constitutional.
Did they have a court case concerning [i]this[/i]?
[QUOTE=JDK721v5;25577733]I got a late rating. Was this already posted? I didn't see it.[/QUOTE]
This is facepunch, people will always rate you box, clock, and rainbow.
I agree with Tyler
Also this is very interesting
[QUOTE=wuzzimu;25577749]Well, this doesn't seem worth the hype. I mean, it really was barely worth the US worrying so much about it.[/QUOTE]
The hype surrounding Wikileaks' leaks is the about the leak it self, not the content. As the 20+ page thread here proved last time, these reports are really nothing more than (in some cases) badly filled out paperwork which has to be done every time anything happens.
[editline]23rd October 2010[/editline]
I must say, Wikileaks (and its "media partners") have put more thought into making this accessible for the general public this time.
[url]http://warlogs.owni.fr/[/url]
Crowd-sourcing investigative journalism into leaked documents, what ever next.
[quote]
"This is all classified secret information never designed to be exposed to the public," Morrell told CNN. "Our greatest fear is that it puts our troops in even greater danger than they inherently are on these battlefields. That it will expose tactics, techniques and procedures -- how they operate on the battlefield, how they respond under attack, the capabilities of our equipment ... how we cultivate sources (and) how we work with Iraqis."
[/quote]
Grow a pair.
[QUOTE=wuzzimu;25577749]Well, this doesn't seem worth the hype. I mean, it really was barely worth the US worrying so much about it.[/QUOTE]
That's rather interesting.
[QUOTE=PvtCupcakes;25579224]Grow a pair.[/QUOTE]
He's not the one at risk according to him
[QUOTE=peepin;25577890]I agree with Tyler
Also this is very interesting[/QUOTE]
No, you find me to be rather optimistic.
Not really surprising that Iraqis killed more Iraqis. We got caught in the crossfire between a religious sect feud of the Sunni and Shiite.
This shows.......war is hell and civilians and people die in war.
This changes everything
[QUOTE=Swilly;25582556]Not really surprising that Iraqis killed more Iraqis. We got caught in the crossfire between a religious sect feud of the Sunni and Shiite.[/QUOTE]
Doesn't sound like its very sunni there. Its in a very shiite state now.
But its great fun knowing they'll blow themselves up for a god.
I think that they've run out of useful stuff to post.
[QUOTE=PvtCupcakes;25579224]Grow a pair.[/QUOTE]
What a stupid thing to say.
[QUOTE=Richard Simmons;25582611]Doesn't sound like its very sunni there. Its in a very shiite state now.
But its great fun knowing they'll blow themselves up for a god.[/QUOTE]
Yeah, the Sunni were already outnumbered to begin with. Sadam keeping the Shiite down during his reign only made that anger towards Sunni even greater.
I wanna see them post documents about countries like France or England, I get tired of hearing about "evil" America. I swear I hate living here, but it gets old when everyone uses the US as a scapegoat for evil things from the West.
I'd love to hear more about Iran's involvement in the Iraq War, but 400k documents? That's just not digestible, especially when they're written in intelligence document format.
The way wikileaks handles these leaks almost makes me think they're working for the Pentagon.
[QUOTE=Regulas021;25582814]I'd love to hear more about Iran's involvement in the Iraq War, but 400k documents? That's just not digestible, especially when they're written in intelligence document format.
The way wikileaks handles these leaks almost makes me think they're working for the Pentagon.[/QUOTE]
They don't have shit to work with. They released everything good off the bat to grab the media's attention and make a shiny penny. Now there's nothing interesting or useful left to post. Why wouldn't Ass post all the stuff as soon as he got it? Why would he risk being arrested and the info being confiscated? It's because he did post it all, all that was interesting at least.
Clearly a lot of you stopped reading at Iraqi civvies killing civvies part, there is much more.
"How the US gave its troops a chilling order to ignore detainee abuse by Iraqi authorities, however severe"
"Mistreatment by Iraqi security forces included beatings, burning, electrocution and rape"
[QUOTE=Swilly;25582724]Yeah, the Sunni were already outnumbered to begin with. Sadam keeping the Shiite down during his reign only made that anger towards Sunni even greater.
I wanna see them post documents about countries like France or England, I get tired of hearing about "evil" America. I swear I hate living here, but it gets old when everyone uses the US as a scapegoat for evil things from the West.[/QUOTE]
Well the rest of the coalition forces don't seem to have A-10s strafing friendlies or having kill squads.
[QUOTE=wuzzimu;25577749]Well, this doesn't seem worth the hype. I mean, it really was barely worth the US worrying so much about it.[/QUOTE]
It shows that some Iraqi's were tortured by American soldiers though.
[QUOTE=markg06;25585230]Well the rest of the coalition forces don't seem to have A-10s strafing friendlies or having kill squads.[/QUOTE]
This.
It is sad that US Army soldiers kill civilians, AND they ignore when the Iraqi Army tortures them
[QUOTE=Snoops;25585422]It shows that some Iraqi's were tortured by American soldiers though.[/QUOTE]
Isn't this pretty much common knowledge though? Admittedly only one or two cases are public knowledge but surely people must have realised that the abu ghraib stuff was not a one off.
There's a wonderful instance of a number of insurgents trying to surrender to a helicopter. But the pilots are told that insurgents cannot surrender to flying units and are ordered to gun them down.
IT'S THE RULES.:colbert:
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