Iraq Special: 10 Dramatic Revelations in Wikileaks' 400,000 Documents
Monday, October 25, 2010 at 8:41
It has been hard for us to keep up with the swirl of stories emerging from the summaries of Wikileaks' forthcoming release of 392,000 documents on US intervention in Iraq. The scale of revelations on civilian casualties, possible misconduct --- including abuse and torture by Iraqi and US forces --- and complications such as the use of private contractors may take weeks to appreciate fully. And, remember, the documents are not even out yet.
As a starting point for today, we offer two guides: 1) a Top Ten from The Daily Beast and 2) Andy Worthington's incisive overview of the information on civilian casualties and torture:
Daily Beast
1. Misleading Casualties
The leaked documents show that the U.S. was, in fact, keeping track of Iraqi civilian deaths, despite statements to the contrary. The documents show that 109,032 Iraqis died between January 1, 2004, and December 31, 2009, 66,081 of whom were civilians. However, even these numbers may fall short of the truth when depicting civilian deaths at the hands of coalition forces: No civilian deaths are recorded in Fallujah, for example, the site of two major battles in 2004. Iraq Body Count monitorscounted over 1,200 civilian deaths during the fighting.
2. Unreported Cases of Torture
The secret files detail numerous cases of abuse and torture by Iraqi police, and the American military’s failure to investigate them. They include reports of detainees being shackled and hung from their wrists or ankles, whipped, burned with acid, electrocuted, and sexually assaulted. According to Al Jazeera, Iraqi police used electric drills to get information from prisoners. The Guardian reports that six prisoners died from torture, including one who died of “unknown surgery.”
3. “Frago 242”
Because of secret order Frago 242 (short for “fragmentary order”), it was coalition policy not to investigate many reports of torture, The Guardian reports. Issued in June 2004, Frago 242 required that coalition troops not investigate any breach of the laws of armed conflict unless it directly involved members of the coalition. The Guardian gives the example of a video the U.S. military received showing Iraqi army members dragging a man into the street, beating and shooting him. Despite the fact that the report even listed the name of one of the perpetrators, the leaked document shows it was marked "no investigation is necessary" and passed back to the unit incriminated in the report.
4. U.S. Helicopter Killed Surrendering Iraqis
The same unit and helicopter, call sign Crazyhorse 18, involved in the so-called Collateral Murder video, in which two Reuters employees are killed and two children wounded, is reported to have killed two Iraqi combatants who were trying to surrender in February 2007. “You cannot surrender to an aircraft," a lawyer back at base reportedly told the U.S. soldiers.
ANDY WORTHINGTON
Of particular importance are the reports of civilian deaths (both those that were previously documented, and the 15,000 that have not been disclosed before), not just because they provide a shocking insight into how many civilians have died in unreported circumstances (although these figures are still far less than those cited in other reports), but also because they flatly contradict the military’s assertions that, as General Tommy Franks claimed in 2002, “We don’t do body counts.” As theGuardian explained, in flat contradiction of Gen. Franks’ claim, “Troops on the ground filed secret field reports over six years of the occupation, purporting to tot up every casualty, military and civilian.” In response to the revelations, Iraq Body Count, the London-based group that monitors civilian casualties, stated, “These logs contain a huge amount of entirely new information regarding casualties. Our analysis so far indicates that they will add 15,000 or more previously unrecorded deaths to the current IBC total. This data should never have been withheld from the public.”
However, as well as containing information about 15,000 previously unreported civilian deaths, the documents reveal information about the ongoing abuse of detainees by US forces, a systematic failure by the US authorities to investigate hundreds of reports of abuse, torture, rape and murder by Iraqi police and soldiers, and the revelation that a US helicopter gunship involved in the cold-blooded murder of a dozen people in July 2007, including two Iraqis working for Reuters (released on video by Wikileaks in April), had previously killed two Iraqi insurgents after they tried to surrender.
The Guardian’s coverage is here, Der Spiegel’s is here, and the New York Times’ coverage, which unfortunately dwells too much on revelations about the military’s fears of Iranian involvement in the insurgency (as this was an inevitable fallout from the ill-conceived invasion, and should not be used to assist those seeking war against Iran) is here. In addition, Channel 4will be covering the leaked documents in a Dispatches programme on Monday.
Following the release of the documents, both the Pentagon and the British Ministry of Defense issued statements. In Britain, where human rights lawyer Phil Shiner told the press conference this morning that “Some of these deaths will be in circumstances where the UK have a very clear legal responsibility,” and that “This may be because the Iraqis died while under the effective control of UK forces — under arrest, in vehicles, helicopters or detention facilities,” the MoD stated that “any unauthorised release” of classified material “can put the lives of UK service personnel and those of our allies at risk and make the job of armed forces in all theatres of operation more difficult and more dangerous.”
Meanwhile, in the US, the Pentagon stated, “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. 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. The only responsible course of action for Wikileaks at this point is to return the stolen material and expunge it from their websites as soon as possible.”
Given the extensive media coverage of the reports, it would be difficult to imagine how this particular genie could be reinserted in the bottle, or, indeed, why it should be, as the significance of these revelations, and those regarding the Afghan war, is to expose the horrendous brutality of the wars — and their many cover-ups, lies and distortions — rather than to provide any comfort whatsoever to those who believe that the military occupation of either country should continue one day longer.
As Manfred Nowak, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Torture, explained, there was “now a duty on the US to investigate whether its officials were involved in or complicit in torture.” Nowak told the BBC’s Today programme, “President Obama came to power with a moral agenda, saying “we don’t want to be seen to be a nation responsible for major human rights violations.” He added, as the Guardian described it, that a “failure to investigate credible claims of US forces’ complicity in torture would be a failure of the Obama government to recognize the US’s obligations under international law.”
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