Secret files shed light on ugliness of Iraq war

[Night_Hawk]

Secret files shed light on ugliness of Iraq war

NYT: Documents released by whistle-blowing website WikiLeaks detail deaths of Iraqi civilains, abuse of prisoners by American forces

The New York Times
updated 7 minutes ago 2010-10-22T21:22:17
A huge trove of secret field reports from the battlegrounds of Iraq sheds new light on the war, including such fraught subjects as civilian deaths, detainee abuse and the involvement of Iran.
The secret archive is the second such cache obtained by the independent organization WikiLeaks and made available to several news organizations. Like the first release, some 92,000 reports covering six years of the war in Afghanistan, the Iraq documents provide no earthshaking revelations, but they offer insight, texture and context from the people actually fighting the war.
A close analysis of the 391,832 documents helps illuminate several important aspects of this war:
The Iraqi documents were made available to The Times, the British newspaper The Guardian, the French newspaper Le Monde and the German magazine Der Spiegel on the condition that they be embargoed until now. WikiLeaks has never stated where it obtained the information, although an American Army intelligence analyst, Pfc. Bradley Manning, has been arrested and accused of being a source of classified material.

As it did with the Afghan war logs, The Times has redacted or withheld any documents that would put lives in danger or jeopardize continuing military operations. Names of Iraqi informants, for example, have not been disclosed. WikiLeaks said that it has also employed teams of editors to scrub the material for posting on its Web site.
WikiLeaks has been under strong pressure from the United States and the governments of other countries but is also fraying internally, in part because of a decision to post many of the Afghan documents without removing the names of informants, putting their lives in danger. A profile of WikiLeaks’s contentious founder, Julian Assange, will appear in Sunday’s newspaper.
The New York Times told the Pentagon which specific documents it planned to post and showed how they had been redacted. The Pentagon said it would have preferred that The Times not publish any classified materials but did not propose any cuts. Geoff Morrell, the Defense Department press secretary, strongly condemned both WikiLeaks and the release of the Iraq documents.


“We deplore WikiLeaks for inducing individuals to break the law, leak classified documents and then cavalierly share that secret information with the world, including our enemies,” he said.
“We know terrorist organizations have been mining the leaked Afghan documents for information to use against us and this Iraq leak is more than four times as large. By disclosing such sensitive information, WikiLeaks continues to put at risk the lives of our troops, their coalition partners and those Iraqis and Afghans working with us.”
Read the full Pentagon response.
This story, " The Iraq Archive: The Strands of a War," first appeared in The New York Times.
Copyright 2010 The New York Times

 

[biomat]

Asslam-o-alaikum
Brother night hawk, dont trust this wikileaks.. They have dubious character, wait & see what new role they will play.. Even americans are exposing wikileak as CIA ASSET, so that later they will b used to malign their opponents.. Currently they are earning trust of common public. Prev leaked docs were from internet gathered together with CIA mixed reports to force some certain govts..
Dont trust them blindly...ALLAH knows best...

 

[hassam]

Asslam-o-alaikum
Brother night hawk, dont trust this wikileaks.. They have dubious character, wait & see what new role they will play.. Even americans are exposing wikileak as CIA ASSET, so that later they will b used to malign their opponents.. Currently they are earning trust of common public. Prev leaked docs were from internet gathered together with CIA mixed reports to force some certain govts..
Dont trust them blindly...ALLAH knows best...

I agree with Biomat. In this controlled world, if something is leaked then it is controlled in another sinister way. Do not know what they are up to now.

 

[harisuae]

Wiki Leaks Releases Docs on IRAQ War!

 

[hkniazi]

Re: Wiki Leaks Releases Docs on IRAQ War!

@harisuae

bro can u get the access to the wikileaks.org or is it temporarily down also for u?

 

[kashmiri]

Re: Wiki Leaks Releases Docs on IRAQ War!

 

[Abdali]

Iraq War Logs: Secret Files Show How US Ignored Torture.America The Enemy Of Islam.CENTCOM US Pay attention.

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.

Massive leak reveals serial detainee abuse
15,000 unknown civilian deaths in war
By Nick Davies, Jonathan Steele and David Leigh

October 22, 2010 "The Guardian" - -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.
Almost 400,000 secret US army field reports have been passed to the Guardian and a number of other international media organisations via the whistleblowing website WikiLeaks.
The electronic archive is believed to emanate from the same dissident US army intelligence analyst who earlier this year is alleged to have leaked a smaller tranche of 90,000 logs chronicling bloody encounters and civilian killings in the Afghan war.
The new logs detail how:
US authorities failed to investigate hundreds of reports of abuse, torture, rape and even murder by Iraqi police and soldiers whose conduct appears to be systematic and normally unpunished.
A US helicopter gunship involved in a notorious Baghdad incident had previously killed Iraqi insurgents after they tried to surrender.
More than 15,000 civilians died in previously unknown incidents. US and UK officials have insisted that no official record of civilian casualties exists but the logs record 66,081 non-combatant deaths out of a total of 109,000 fatalities.
The 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.
As recently as December the Americans were passed a video apparently showing Iraqi army officers executing a prisoner in Tal Afar, northern Iraq. The log states: "The footage shows approximately 12 Iraqi army soldiers. Ten IA 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 report named at least one perpetrator and was passed to coalition forces. But the logs reveal that the coalition has a formal policy of ignoring such allegations. They record "no investigation is necessary" and simply pass reports to the same Iraqi units implicated in the violence. By contrast all allegations involving coalition forces are subject to formal inquiries. Some cases of alleged abuse by UK and US troops are also detailed in the logs.
In two Iraqi cases postmortems revealed evidence of death by torture. On 27 August 2009 a US medical officer found "bruises and burns as well as visible injuries to the head, arm, torso, legs and neck" on the body of one man claimed by police to have killed himself. On 3 December 2008 another detainee, said by police to have died of "bad kidneys", was found to have "evidence of some type of unknown surgical procedure on [his] abdomen".
A Pentagon spokesman told the New York Times this week that under its procedure, when reports of Iraqi abuse were received the US military "notifies the responsible government of Iraq agency or ministry for investigation and follow-up".
The logs also illustrate the readiness of US forces to unleash lethal force. In one chilling incident they detail how an Apache helicopter gunship gunned down two men in February 2007.
The suspected insurgents had been trying to surrender but a lawyer back at base told the pilots: "You cannot surrender to an aircraft." The Apache, callsign Crazyhorse 18, was the same unit and helicopter based at Camp Taji outside Baghdad that later that year, in July, mistakenly killed two Reuters employees and wounded two children in the streets of Baghdad.
Iraq Body Count, the London-based group that monitors civilian casualties, says it has identified around 15,000 previously unknown civilian deaths from the data contained in the leaked war logs.
Although US generals have claimed their army does not carry out body counts and British ministers still say no official statistics exist, the war logs show these claims are untrue. The field reports purport to identify all civilian and insurgent casualties, as well as numbers of coalition forces wounded and killed in action. They give a total of more than 109,000 violent deaths from all causes between 2004 and the end of 2009.
This includes 66,081 civilians, 23,984 people classed as "enemy" and 15,196 members of the Iraqi security forces. Another 3,771 dead US and allied soldiers complete the body count.
No fewer than 31,780 of these deaths are attributed to improvised roadside bombs (IEDs) planted by insurgents. The other major recorded tally is of 34,814 victims of sectarian killings, recorded as murders in the logs.
However, the US figures appear to be unreliable in respect of civilian deaths caused by their own military activities. For example, in Falluja, the site of two major urban battles in 2004, no civilian deaths are recorded. Yet Iraq Body Count monitors identified more than 1,200 civilians who died during the fighting.
Phil Shiner, human rights specialist at Public Interest Lawyers, plans to use material from the logs in court to try to force the UK to hold a public inquiry into the unlawful killing of Iraqi civilians.
He also plans to sue the British government over its failure to stop the abuse and torture of detainees by Iraqi forces. The coalition's formal policy of not investigating such allegations is "simply not permissible", he says.
Shiner is already pursuing a series of legal actions for former detainees allegedly killed or tortured by British forces in Iraq.
WikiLeaks says it is posting online the entire set of 400,000 Iraq field reports in defiance of the Pentagon.
The whistleblowing activists say they have deleted all names from the documents that might result in reprisals. They were accused by the US military of possibly having "blood on their hands" over the previous Afghan release by redacting too few names. But the military recently conceded that no harm had been identified.
Condemning this fresh leak, however, the Pentagon said: "This security breach could very well get our troops and those they are fighting with killed. 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."

 

[Abdali]

American Crimes Against Muslims.Iraq war logs: Apache Crew Killed Insurgents Who Tried to Surrender

Iraq war logs: Apache Crew Killed Insurgents Who Tried to Surrender

Still want 2 billion US Dollars Pakistanis??JEE SAHIB?

US military legal adviser told helicopter crew that Iraqi men were valid targets as they could not surrender to aircraftA US gunship crew was cleared to attack two insurgents on the ground even though the pilots had reported that the men were trying to surrender, the leaked Iraq war logs reveal.
The Apache helicopter pilots killed both Iraqi men after being advised by a US military lawyer that they could not surrender to an aircraft and therefore remained valid targets. A leading military law expert consulted by the Guardian has questioned this legal advice.
The Guardian can also reveal that the helicopter involved in the incident in 2007 had the same call sign Crazyhorse 18 as the Apache whose crew later mistakenly killed two Reuters journalists and injured two children in a notorious shooting in urban Baghdad. The killings drew worldwide condemnation in April this year when WikiLeaks obtained video footage taken from the helicopter's gun camera and released it on the internet.
It has not been possible to establish whether the same personnel were involved in both attacks.
According to the account of the earlier incident in the leaked logs, the insurgents had jumped out of their truck after it came under fire from the Apache. "They came out wanting to surrender," Crazyhorse 18 signalled.
Clearance to kill came back from an unnamed lawyer at the nearby Taji airbase. "Lawyer states they can not surrender to aircraft and are still valid targets," the log entry says.
After receiving the lawyer's advice, the pilots reported that the men had by now got back into their truck and were attempting to drive on. The gunship made two attempts to kill the fleeing men, launching a Hellfire missile at the truck.
At first the fresh attack failed. "Individuals have run into another shack," the crew signalled. As the Apache hovered high in the sky, a few miles north of Baghdad, the pilots viewed a zoomed-in image of the fleeing pair on their video screen.
The crew then received a further specific top-level kill instruction from brigade HQ and made another strafing run, firing bursts from long distance at 300 rounds a minute from the Apache's 30mm cannon. This time, the gunner succeeded in killing both men.
At 1.03pm on 22 February, just 24 minutes after receiving legal clearance, the crew filed a log entry: "Crazyhorse 18 reports engaged and destroyed shack with 2X AIF [anti-Iraq forces]. Battle damage assessment is shack/dump truck destroyed."
Crazyhorse 18 was part of the US army's 1st Battalion, 227th Aviation Regiment, normally based at Fort Hood, Texas. Five months after this incident, on 12 July 2007, the crew of an Apache with the same call sign mistakenly killed 22-year-old Reuters photographer Namir Noor-Eldeen and his driver, Saeed Chmagh, after opening fire on a group of eight men they believed to be insurgents armed with rocket-propelled grenades and AK47 rifles in a Baghdad suburb.
Two children were badly injured and their father killed when the Apache crew fired armour-piercing shells at a van which arrived on the scene.
The account of the February incident recorded in the classified log suggests the Crazyhorse 18 crew were not trigger-happy, but sought immediate advice from their superiors at all stages of the attack.
Under the 1907 Hague regulations, it is forbidden "to kill or wound an enemy who, having laid down his arms, or having no longer means of defence, has surrendered at discretion".
Britain's own official Ministry of Defence publication, the Manual of the Law of Armed Conflict, says there are practical difficulties around surrenders to aircraft, but adds: "With the advent of close-support and ground-attack helicopter units, the surrender of ground troops has become a more practical proposition."
One of Britain's foremost experts on the subject, Professor Sir Adam Roberts, cast doubt on the legal advice given to the Crazyhorse 18 crew. "Surrender is not always a simple matter," Roberts, emeritus professor of international relations at Oxford University and joint editor of Documents on the Laws of War, told the Guardian. But the reasoning given by the US military lawyer was "dogmatic and wrong".
"The issue is not that ground forces simply cannot surrender to aircraft," he said. "The issue is that ground forces in such circumstances need to surrender in ways that are clear and unequivocal."
However, he added: "If the insurgents did indeed get back into the truck and drove off in the same direction as previously, then they probably acted unwisely, in a way that called into question their act of surrender The US airmen might legitimately reckon that the truck contained weapons and that the men could be intending to rejoin the fight sooner or later."
The detailed account of events on that February morning begins with a common occurrence: insurgents near the huge Taji airbase start lobbing rockets and mortar shells, in the hope of killing Americans. US troops return the shelling, and Crazyhorse 18 is dispatched on a mission to see whether the retaliation has had any effect. At 11.34am, three minutes after takeoff, the crew spot the insurgents fleeing their launch site with a mortar and tripod on the back of a Bongo a light truck manufactured by Kia.
The crew confirm a "positive identification" of the enemy. But it is 13 minutes before the pilots are officially "cleared to engage" with automatic cannonfire by their headquarters.
The Apache opens fire, and two Iraqis fling themselves out of the Bongo as the heavy shells blast the truck and cause its stock of mortar ammunition to "cook off".
The enemy gunners try to make their escape in a dumper truck, driving northwards. At 12.33pm, the Apache reports that it has fired on the truck, "and then they came out wanting to surrender".
Two minutes later, "Crazyhorse 18 reports they got back into truck and are heading north". Four minutes after that: "Crazyhorse 18 cleared to engage dumptruck. 1/227 [1st Battalion, 227th Aviation Regiment] lawyer states they cannot surrender to aircraft and are still valid targets."
The two Iraqis try to take refuge in a shack. After a 13-minute delay, another instruction appears to come from a remarkably high level: the office of the commander [IH6] of the Ironhorse brigade at Camp Taji.
The signal reads: "IH6 approves Crazyhorse 18 to engage shack."
After the killing, the helicopter pilots summarise what for them and their superiors has apparently been a successful chase: "Ix engagement with 30mm. 2x AIF killed in action. 1x mortar system destroyed. 1x Bongo truck destroyed with many secondary explosions. 1x dumptruck destroyed. 1x shack destroyed."
At 1.25pm, their gunship heads home to Taji to refuel and reload with ammunition.