Wikileaks Round II (Iraq) Rolling Update 20101105

07 Other Atrocities, 09 Justice, Military, Peace Intelligence
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NOTICE: Within DoD, at least all elements of the Army as well as the Marine Corps Reserve have been given direct, unqualified, written orders not to access the Wikileaks site or read the Wikileaks document via any Government **OR** non-Government computer.  This Rolling Update complies with the DoD guidance.

Friday 5 November 2010

WikiLeaks Incidents May Lead to Data Sharing Restrictions, DIA Chief Says

Journalists Protest Crackdown On Wikileaks, Julian Assange

Wikileaks Info Cherry Picked by Corporate Media to Bolster Case Against Iran

Thursday 4 November 2010

Assange may seek political asylum in Switzerland

WikiLeaks urges US to probe alleged rights abuses

ALTON: WikiLeaks boosts Iran influence in Iraq

Friday 29 October 2010

TEHRAN, Iran (AP) — Iran on Tuesday rejected as “suspicious” and “diabolical” disclosures by WikiLeaks on its role in neighboring Iraq.

Thursday 28 October 2010

Popping the Military's Classification Bubble (Foreign Policy)

The vast majority of the WikiLeaks documents on Afghanistan shouldn't have been classified. I should know, I wrote some of them.

BY SCOTT BOHLINGER | OCTOBER 28, 2010

The information that I collected and distributed was open-source — and available to anyone who put in the effort to find out — and yet was being classified by the U.S. military after it had become a matter of public record. This means that the classification was not only a waste of resources, but removed information from the context and conversation in which it was occurring.

– – – – – –

This dearth of new information is the real story — not that secrets are finally being uncovered. Rather than offering any insight into the Afghan war, the documents have shown just how irrelevant the closed silos of U.S. intelligence have become.

Iraq war logs: media reaction around the world (Guardian UK)

How the media around the globe have been covering the WikiLeaks revelations, and which parts they are focusing on

Wednesday 27 October 2010

UN calls for abuse probe over WikiLeaks Iraq docs (THINQ.co.uk)

n a statement, High Commissioner Navi Pillay said: “The files reportedly indicate that the US knew, among other things, about widespread use of torture and ill-treatment of detainees by Iraqi forces, and yet proceeded with the transfer of thousands of persons who had been detained by US forces to Iraqi custody between early 2009 and July 2010.

More on the media's Pentagon-subservient WikiLeaks coverage (Salon)

Apparently, many people become quite angry when the newspaper which did more to enable the attack on Iraq than any other media outlet in the world covered one of the most significant war leaks in American history — documents detailing the deaths of more than 100,000 human beings in that war and the heinous abuse of thousands of others — by assigning its most celebrated war correspondent and London Bureau Chief to studiously examine and malign the totally irrelevant personality quirks, alleged mental health, and various personal relationships of Julian Assange.  Imagine that.

Why Israel sees double standard in response to Wikileaks' Iraq files (Christian Science Journal)

Iranian FM says WikiLeaks' releases “suspicious” (XinHua)

Monday 25 October 2010

Anger over Wikileaks’ Iraq can of worms (euronews)

Human rights groups and governments upset over US allowing torture and indirectly supporting torture by Iraqis of other Iraqis.

Wikileaks Iraq: what's wrong with the data? (Guardian UK)

So, although the data paints a grim picture, the facts are likely to be much, much worse, because of underreporting.

Innocent victims: Baghdad shop owner Abu Abdullah, right, cried following 2007 U.S. bomb strike which killed two of his sons

Murder, rape and the final proof that Britain should never have fought this shaming war (Daily Mail UK)

The Iraq war was fought in the name of ­civilised values and ­common decency. The British and Americans presented themselves as the good guys, bringing ­democracy and the rule of law and ­humanity to a ­dysfunctional country ruled by a lunatic ­genocidal tyrant.

Saddam Hussein’s many crimes against humanity, including his brutal ­persecution of the Shia ­population and his murder of tens of thousands of Kurds in northern Iraq, were ­repeatedly emphasised by the U.S. and British governments before the invasion, though perhaps sometimes exaggerated.

If this neat contrast between good and evil has already worn pretty thin in the seven-and-a-half years since the invasion of Iraq, it has now finally been blown apart by a massive leak of nearly 400,000 official ­American military ‘field reports’ by WikiLeaks.

Gulf states urge US to probe Wikileaks Iraq ‘crimes' (BBC News)

Blurred demand for US investigation (none will take place) of abuses committed by US troops, but no real focus on the fact that it was Iraqis torturing Iraqis that comprise the bulk of the atrocities documented by the leaked documents.

Media Does Hit Job on WikiLeaks Founder After Iraq War Leak (Alter.net)

The New York Times has published one notable hit piece on Assange, focused on “every tawdry, scurrilous tabloid rumor about him,” as Slate’s Glenn Greenwald puts it, rather than the shocking facts of the Iraq war documents.

Sunday 24 October 2010

Iraq war logs: US turned over captives to Iraqi torture squads Guardian UK)

Lawyers said the reports may embroil British as well as US forces in an alleged culture of abuse and extrajudicial killings.

Iraq war logs: Wikileaks' virtual memorial (Guardian UK)

If the Pentagon had had to disclose details of all casualties in Iraq in real time, the public could have judged ‘progress' for itself

Use Of Contractors Added To War's Chaos In Iraq (New York Times)

The archive, which describes many episodes never made public in such detail, shows the multitude of shortcomings with this new system: how a failure to coordinate among contractors, coalition forces and Iraqi troops, as well as a failure to enforce rules of engagement that bind the military, endangered civilians as well as the contractors themselves. The military was often outright hostile to contractors, for being amateurish, overpaid and, often, trigger-happy.

WikiLeaks Documents Give Iraqis A Fuller Picture Of War (Los Angeles Times)

The release of 391,832 classified documents Friday on the website of the whistle-blowing WikiLeaks has refocused attention on the enormity of the violence unleashed by the 2003 U.S.-led invasion.

US under pressure on WikiLeaks allegations (Times of India)

Amnesty International called on Washington to investigate how much US officials knew about the alleged torture and other ill-treatment of detainees held by Iraqi security forces.    Spokesman Malcolm Smart said the leaks fuelled concerns that US authorities “committed a serious breach of international law when they summarily handed over thousands of detainees to Iraqi security forces who, they knew, were continuing to torture and abuse detainees on a truly shocking scale.”   The rights ministry in Baghdad said the logs “did not contain any surprises”.

Iraq's Maliki: Opponents Will Use U.S. Leaks Against Him (Washington Post)

Maliki's government also said in a statement in response to the trove of documents released Friday night by the whistleblower group WikiLeaks that it would investigate newly disclosed shootings by employees of the American security company formerly known as Blackwater.

Leaked Reports Hint Grim Future For Post-U.S. Iraq (Philadelphia Enquirer)

“We're still very much at the beginning of this story,” an ex-U.S. envoy said.

Saturday 23 October 2010

Despite latest coup, WikiLeaks facing challenges (Washington Post)

“Wikileaks,” said the godfather of whistleblowers, Daniel Ellsberg, “has become the future of unauthorized disclosure.”

Certainly the release Friday was a milestone, the result of the largest leak of classified military documents in history and what the editor of the British newspaper the Guardian called “an extraordinary moment in journalism.”

WikiLeaks Founder on the Run, Trailed by Notoriety (New York Times)

LONDON — Julian Assange moves like a hunted man.

Leaks reveal Blackwater excesses (Al Jazeera)

Video story.

Iraq war logs: military privatisation run amok (Guardian UK)

Blackwater, the company from Moyock, North Carolina, is responsible for about half of the attacks, closely followed by Erinys, a British private security company registered in the Virgin Islands, which seems to have an unusually high number of vehicle crashes.

US Shot Down Iranian Drone in Iraq, WikiLeaks Confirms (Mother Jones)

The Iraq War logs reveal new details about an Iranian UAV that buzzed US soldiers, and maybe Iranian refugees, in Iraq.

See No Evil: Secret Files Show How US Ignored Iraq Torture (Guardian UK)

Grim summary of torture, summary executions, and war crimes.

Release Of Iraq Files Sparks War Of Words With Pentagon (Financial Times UK)

Gates on AF leak: no threat to national security; Pentagon on IQ leak: world as we know it is ending….

Iraq War Logs Reveal Details Of Dubious Apache Attacks (Spiegel DE)

Surrender?  We don't “compute” surrender….fire at will.

The Iraq Archive: The Strands Of A War (New York Times)

Iran–and out of control US contractors–played larger role than most have understood to date.

A Grim Portrait Of Civilian Deaths In Iraq (New York Times)

15,000 new unreported deaths, “death by Apache helicopter,” bring total up toward quarter million.

Detainees Fared Worse In Iraqi Hands, Logs Say (New York Times)

Beatings, burnings, lashes, amputated fingers, acid, electric shocks, sodomy, and murder…

Leaked Reports Detail Iran's Aid For Iraqi Militias (New York Times)

Strong Iranian presence and provision of materiel including push to capture US soldiers.

Secret Iraq War Files Offer Grim New Details (Washington Post)

Pentagon condemns release but does not question authenticity of released documents.

Iraq War documents leak (Wikipedia)

Friday 22 October 2010

Chemical Weapons, Iranian Agents and Massive Death Tolls Exposed in WikiLeaks’ Iraq Docs (WIRED)

So it’s more than a little ironic that, with its newest document dump from the Iraq campaign, WikiLeaks may have just bolstered one of the Bush administration’s most controversial claims about the Iraq war: that Iran supplied many of the Iraq insurgency’s deadliest weapons and worked hand-in-glove with some of its most lethal militias.

Five bombshells from WikiLeaks' Iraq war documents (Christian Science Monitor)
1. Whereabouts of US hikers when seized by Iran
2. Iran's involvement inside Iraq
3. Grisly deaths of innocent civilians
4. Secret death counts
5. Details of torture and abuse

WikiLeaks' Iraq War Logs: US Troops Abused Prisoners Years After Abu Ghraib (Huffington Post)

The documents include accounts of Iraqi forces sodomizing and electrocuting prisoners, according to Al-Jazeera News, which has been collaborating along with The Guardian and Le Monde with WikiLeaks on the latest document dump.

In addition, Al-Jazeera is reporting that the documents include more revelations about prisoner abuse, the first official civilian deathcount, tales of murder at military checkpoints and the role of Blackwater, the controversial contractor.

A flood of revelations is expected from the 400,00 confidential Iraq War reports just released by WikiLeaks. Read the Guardian's summary of the findings, and then check out TIME's list of the top 10 leaks. (Then watch what WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange thought about the list.)

US forces turn a blind eye to torture (YouTube, undated)

Electrocution, sodomizing with water bottles, beaten to death….FRAGO 242: do not intervene in Iraqi on Iraqi torture.  FRAGO 039 report but do not interfere.

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