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WikiLeaks releases 'The Iraq War Logs'
Press release by Wikileaks
At 5pm EST Friday 22nd October 2010 WikiLeaks released the largest classified military leak in history. The 391,832 reports ('The Iraq War Logs'), document the war and occupation in Iraq, from 1st January 2004 to 31st Decemc'est un padber 2009 (except for the months of May 2004 and March 2009) as told by soldiers in the United States Army. Each is a 'SIGACT' or Significant Action in the war. They detail events as seen and heard by the US military troops on the ground in Iraq and are the first real glimpse into the secret history of the war that the United States government has been privy to throughout.
The reports detail 109,032 deaths in Iraq, comprised of 66,081 'civilians'; 23,984 'enemy' (those labeled as insurgents); 15,196 'host nation' (Iraqi government forces) and 3,771 'friendly' (coalition forces). The majority of the deaths (66,000, over 60%) of these are civilian deaths.That is 31 civilians dying every day during the six year period. For comparison, the 'Afghan War Diaries', previously released by WikiLeaks, covering the same period, detail the deaths of some 20,000 people. Iraq during the same period, was five times as lethal with equivallent population size.
This average does not include the slain working in the Iraqi security services or those claimed by US soldiers to be 'insurgents'. When these are added in, almost 50 Iraqis died on average in every single day reported by the logs.
Many of these deaths are violent deaths, often featuring grim details that have never been told before; murdered and tortured bodies discovered all over Baghdad. There are reports of civilians being indiscriminately killed at checkpoints, such as speeding to get a pregnant woman to hospital; of Iraqi detainees being tortured by Coalition Forces; and of US soldiers blowing up entire civilian buildings because of one suspected insurgent on the roof. In amongst all this horror there are just ten lone reports mentioning primary political reasons the public was given for the war weapons of mass destruction (WMD). And many of these purely state that no weapons of mass destruction were found. There are over 300 recorded reports of colation forces committing torture and abuse of detainees across 284 reports and over 1,000 cases of Iraqi security forces committing similar crimes.
There are numerous cases of what appear to be clear war crimes by US forces, such as the deliberate killing of persons trying to surrender. Prior to the release of the Iraq War Logs, WikiLeaks undertook the arduous task of redacting any piece of information contained that might lead to the identification of any innocent Iraqi. We have performed this process by beginning with redacting everything and then deciding what is safe to put back in. We therefore apologise if you find that there is far too much redacted in these logs at the current stage. We hope to raise the capital necessary to continue this process and enable more of the data to be un-redacted. The Pentagon refused to assist this process, stating that it was not interested in 'harm minimization', only complete destruction of the record. WikiLeaks has brought together a number of collaborators to go through this vast wealth of previously classified material: Analysis by the independent NGO, Iraq Body Count (IBC) suggests the Logs contain 15,000 civilian deaths that have not been previously discovered outside the pentagon. Most of the newly revealed deaths in the Logs occurred in previously unreported violent incidents involving the deaths of one or two people. They include targeted assassinations, drive-by-shootings, torture, executions, and checkpoint killings. Public Interest Lawyers are presently acting in four judicial review cases which arise from details discovered in the Iraq War Logs. Two of these are ongoing and two are being developed to the pre-action letter stage. The cases will be detailed at a release press conference in London on Saturday 23rd October. WikiLeaks have also structured collaborations with a number of other media organisations to ensure that as much of the information contained within these logs is brought into the public domain from the moment of the War Logs release. Please donate to WikiLeaks at xxx to defend this information and our activities. For further information on the content from our media collaborators:
Iraq Body Count - www.iraqbodycount.org
Public Interest Lawyers - www.publicinterestlawyers.co.uk
Bureau of Investigative Journalism - www.iraqwarlogs.com
The Guardian - www.guardian.co.uk
Der Spiegel - www.spiegel.de
The New York Times - www.nytimes.com
About Wikileaks
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