Torture, killing, children shot – and how the US tried to keep it all quiet

[Turborama]

The largest leak in history reveals the true extent of the bloodshed unleashed by the decision to go to war in Iraq – and adds at least 15,000 to its death toll

Reports by Emily Dugan, Nina Lakhani, David Randall, Victoria Richards and Rachel Shields
Sunday, October 24 2010


US and Iraqi soldiers escort detainees after a raid, in 2008

So now we begin to know the full extent of what Tony Blair called the blood price. A detainee tortured with live electrical wires here, children shot by US troops at a checkpoint there, insurgents using children to carry out suicide bombings somewhere else; on and on, through 391,832 documents. At the Pentagon, these messages were the day-to-day commonplaces of staff inboxes; for Iraqis, they detail, in the emotionless jargon of the US military, nothing less than the hacking open of a nation's veins.

Today, seven and a half years on from the order to invade, the largest leak in history has shown, far more than has been hitherto known, just what was unleashed by that declaration of war. The Iraqi security services tortured hundreds, and the US military watched, noted and emailed, but rarely intervened. A US helicopter gunship crew were ordered to shoot insurgents trying to surrender. A doctor sold al-Qa'ida a list of female patients with learning difficulties so they could be duped into being suicide bombers. A private US company, which made millions of dollars from the outsourcing of security duties, killed civilians. And the Americans, who have always claimed never to count civilian deaths, were in fact secretly logging them. At a conservative estimate, the new documents add at least 15,000 to the war's death toll.

It was yesterday morning when WikiLeaks, the crowd-funded website which achieved worldwide fame for releasing Afghanistan material earlier this year, uploaded nearly 400,000 US military documents. Covering the 2004-09 period, they consist of messages passed from low-level or medium-level operational troops to their superiors and ultimate bosses in the Pentagon. They are marked "Secret", by no means the highest of security classifications.

The Pentagon's response was to say that the leak put the lives of US troops and their military partners in jeopardy, and other official sources dismissed the documents as revealing little that was new. An answer to this came from Iraq Body Count, the British organisation that has monitored civilian deaths since 2003: "These Iraq logs ... contain information on civilian and other casualties that has been kept from public view by the US government for more than six years.... The data on casualties is information about the public (mainly the Iraqi public) that was unjustifiably withheld from both the Iraqi and world public by the US military, apparently with the intent to do so indefinitely."

Full article and links to more: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/politics/torture-killing-children-shot-ndash-and-how-the-us-tried-to-keep-it-all-quiet-2115112.html

http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/leading-articles/leading-article-the-unknowns-were-knowable-2114930.html">Leading article: The 'unknowns' were knowable

The Logs: http://wikileaks.org/iraq/diarydig

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=385x518301">Al Jazeera English's 1Hour Special Exposé Of War Crimes: The Secret Iraq Files


http://www.iraqwarlogs.com/">

[sabrina 1]

1. The U.S. was asked many times if they knew how many

people were dying and they always claimed they did not keep track of war deaths 'we don't do body counts'! Who could forget that statement? Now we know they were counting. They lie even when they don't have to.

This is another great article on the documents.

[Turborama]

2. I've heard someone conclude that the release of these files might force the Pentagon to be more open

It is a big MIGHT but, as Assange (or was it Scahill?) said, there are a few good apples in that particularly rotten barrel who are releasing things to Wikileaks.

[sabrina 1]

6. I'm sure there are or were good people in the military.

Eg, we know that several Military prosecutors refused to go forward with trials of detainees because they realized there was no evidence that they had done anything wrong.

And we also that many Republican appointees quit the Justice Dept. because they witnessed things there they could not support.

I know of at least one soldier who refused to return to Iraq because he said, they had given him orders to shoot children and he had refused, but knew if he went back, he would probably die 'from friendly fire' or follow orders his conscience would not allow. So he went to jail instead. And there were several Generals who were forced into retirement because they did not agree with the policies of the Bush administration.

Maybe some of them will start speaking out again. But I imagine they have real reason to fear for their lives if they do.

[flyarm]

3. K&R for the truth and for the children murdered by our government and the tortured and murdered

by our government.

[TexasObserver]

4. Our misconduct in both wars has left our country without moral standing.

We became the ogre so many in the world accused us of being.

We did the things they accused us of doing.

We became the foreign invaders who kill a country and terrorize its citizens.

At least when Bush Sr. had a war, we saw only images of our troops treating every POW humanely. We saw soldiers behaving the way we expected them to behave. Then Bush, Jr. came into office, and he had to prove he wasn't a wimp. His DOD had to make the wars a crusade against "evil doers," whose isolated deeds became the guilt of a religion and region.

A war should have a legitimate purpose which cannot be achieved without war.

[G_j]

5. K&R

[readmoreoften]

7. K&R.

[EFerrari]

8. K&R