The Secret Iraq Files

[AD-15]

http://english.aljazeera.net/secreti...631317837.html


Way too many links to post here so I'll just post the front page.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Not any more!

[peterb]

As this is quite a serious topic, Im moving it to QT.

And for a more analytical view

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-11612731

[Andeh13]

With that many soldiers, in such a tense conflict...what do they expect? A few bad apples are always going to cause problems. I don't see why people are so shocked & horrified about this. Of course it is utterly wrong what's happened, but did people honestly think 100,000+ soldiers in a conflict scenario for so long wouldn't cause some trouble? Higher ranks above of them will have known this, expected it & covered it up as they saw fit, which again is wrong (and they need need to be dealt with)...but how much of it will have actually been written down?

This wikileaks is such a big non story if you ask me.

[peterb]

Well there are two aspects to this. Leaking information that has been classified to protect methods, doctrine, tactics, weapon capability, military capability, intelligence sources etc, that could compromise the conduct of operations, or the economic and physical security of a nation is reprehensible and should be condemmed.

However if the information has been classified to protect bad or dubious political decisions, or to protect those who may have ordered or colluded in practices that may be contrary to the rules of war (defined in the Geneva convention) should be disclosed, so they can be investigated. The problem I have with wikileaks is that they don't appear to differentiate between these two cases.

They grey area is when investigation or disclosure of dubious practices then compromises the conduct of military operations.

[format]

Fairly horrifying - 66,000 civilian deaths and that's from what I would imagine are fairly conservative military estimates.

[TooNice]

@Andehh: Whether people are shocked, horrified or not is, in my opinion, a non-factor as to whether something is newsworthy or not. 66,000 civilians killed over a period of 6 years is just over 30 per day. A far cry from genocides, the WW, and even some other "conflicts" elsewhere I am sure, but a tad more serious than the lady who put a cat in a wheelie, or even a gunman on the loose (except that the later is closer to home). I also think that were we on the other side of the conflict, we would not dismiss "a few bad apples" so easily, but demanding justice. Was it not "a few bad apples" who crashed "a couple of planes" and killing a a few thousand innocents that prompted the US to start the "War on terror"?