WikiLeaks’ 400,000 Iraq War Documents Reveal Torture, Civilian Deaths Kevin Poulsen & Kim Zetter - Wired go to original October 25, 2010
The Iraq war documents from WikiLeaks contain thousands of allegations of abuse and torture committed by Iraqi security forces. And a high-level Pentagon directive told US forces to look the other way. (AlJazeeraEnglish)
The secret-spilling website WikiLeaks released almost 400,000 U.S. Army reports from the Iraq War on Friday, marking the largest military leak in U.S. history.
The database covers events from the Iraq War dating from 2004 through 2009, with the vast majority of entries classified at the “secret” level. WikiLeaks’ War Logs page includes a sophisticated search engine that makes it easy to browse and search through the documents. Unlike its Afghan release last July, WikiLeaks does not appear to have made the Iraq database available for bulk download as an SQL or CSV file.
News outlets who’d been provided advance copies of the massive database — including the Qatar-based Al Jazeera network, the U.K. newspaper Guardian and The New York Times — have already published detailed analysis. They’ve found previously unreported civilian death counts in the files, rampant brutality by Iraqi police and a report of a separate shooting incident involving the same Apache helicopter unit that was involved in the now-famous 2007 “Collateral Murder” video that WikiLeaks published last April.
In the second incident, the unit reportedly shot and killed insurgents who were trying to surrender.
For Wired’s take on the contents of the database, watch our sister blog, Danger Room.