Wikileaks to release 400,000 Iraq war documents on Saturday

[Egon]

I think it's funny that anti-war people eat this stuff up. All these leaks will do is have more killings on both sides.

[Kuya]

lol

[Stumblingdrunk]

I think it's funny that anti-war people eat this stuff up. All these leaks will do is have more killings on both sides.

If you don't care about collateral damage, why should anyone else?

[Demosthenes11]

damn that truth that the people want, don't they know it endangers our troops?

[Jonny]

ya! and fuck the Campaign Funds Disclosure Act
it hurts the big Corporations, that trickle down effect works!

[Feedmenow]

http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Middl...aks-Iraq-files

Why Israel sees double standard in response to Wikileaks' Iraq files

The Wikileaks files on US actions in Iraq has some Israelis arguing they were unfairly singled out by a UN inquiry over the Gaza war.

The Wikileaks release of US military field reports from Iraq that detail tens of thousands of civilian casualties in seven years of fighting is being used by some Israels to argue that their country is a victim of an international double standard on human rights.

With Israeli politicians facing possible arrest in Europe and their government facing allegations of war crimes stemming form the United Nations' Goldstone Report on the 2009 Gaza war, some Israelis are drawing a connection between the conduct of the US military in Iraq and the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) in Gaza. They say that the world's likely response – or non-response – to the Wikileaks revelations will demonstrate that Israel is held to a higher standard than other nations.
On Monday, Israeli lawmaker Michael Ben Ari said he filed a formal complaint with the UN, calling for war crimes investigations of senior American politicians and "international arrest warrants for US government leaders."
In a letter to Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, he wrote: "I call on the UN to condemn the behavior of the US and especially its attempts to hide the facts... We need to expose the hypocrisy of the West... The world must understand who the criminals are."
Such a call emanating from Israel – usually a staunch US ally – may seem strange. But Mr. Ben Ari, a member of Israel's far right, isn't interested in prosecutions of Bush or Obama administration officials so much as he is in pointing out what, to his mind, is unfair criticism of Israel.
He's not alone. Gerald Steinberg, an Israeli-American professor of political science at Bar Ilan University, shares the view that the volume of international criticism of Israel is out of proportion, though he departs from Ben Ari when it comes to the case of the US.
"In the US, we already have a greater understanding. They know that they are vulnerable and they will be the next in line"' to be accused of wartime misconduct, says Mr. Steinberg, who also runs NGO Monitor, which has criticized non-profits that criticize Israel. "If this was a fair world and there were universal human rights, then Goldstone would open up an investigation, and the United Nations would meet to investigate the allegations… There would be more Wikileaks about violations in China and Saudi Arabia.''
Highest standard?

Some Israelis complain of unfair criticism of the IDF that they argue holds the Israeli military to a higher standard than any other country. At the same time Israeli politicians and army officers often call the military "the most moral army in the world."
The Goldstone report faulted Israel for the deaths of many civilians during a war with Hamas nearly two years ago that left 1,400 Gazans dead in less than four weeks. Israel also faces two international panels investigating the May 31 killing of nine pro-Palestinian activists on the Mavi Marmara, which challenged Israel's naval blockade of Gaza.
"What the Wikileaks show is the fundamental difference in battlefield contexts,'' says Dan Diker, a fellow at the conservative Jerusalem Center for Public Policy. "Israel is fighting in its backyard in a fishbowl.... In Iraq, you are many thousands of miles away from the home front, and the military has much more control over who sees things.''
Iraqis carried out most crimes detailed by Wikileaks

To be sure, the vast majority of crimes detailed in the Wikileaks documents were carried out by Iraqis – though there are credible accounts of unarmed civilians shot by US soldiers. That last isn't exactly news.
Most such incidents have been written off as "heat-of-battle" accidents, though at least 23 US soldiers have been convicted for killing civilians in the Iraq and Afghan wars. Israel's much shorter war in Gaza has yielded three convictions of soldiers so far, two for the endangering of a Palestinian boy and a third for theft.
The Wikileaks release was featured prominently in Israeli newspapers and spurred sarcasm about the notion of the US facing a UN inquiry or the United Kingdom facing a boycott from its own academics. (Many British professors have called for a boycott on attending conferences in Israel.)
In the left-leaning Haaretz newspaper, political commentator Zvi Barel wrote that condemnation of the US is muted across the Arab world because economic and security ties with the US are too robust to be severed overnight.
"It will be interesting how Turkey responds to the documents and whether it will term them a war crime or state-sponsored terrorism like it accuses Israel,'' he wrote. "Israel can be satisfied with the 'insurance policy' the documents give it against possible condemnation for its actions in the territories.''

Shit is bad when Israelis are calling you out on violations.

[Kuya]

My response to this news is:

1. Irony of country known for war crimes calling out a double standard on its main ally also known for war crimes who covers the first country's ass every chance it gets.

2. Israel biting the hand that feeds. Or some people in Israel biting the hand that feeds.

[Koyangi]

People, civilians and soldiers die in war, nothing new to see here. Numbers/deaths have been misrepresented in lots of wars, there's a coverup about something in every war, nothing new to see here.

[Cadsuane]

What I've taken away from it:

Technically, they're right.

Der Spiegel's analysis posted today:

http://www.spiegel.de/international/...724026,00.html

Protocol of Barbarity

By the end of this one day, 231 people will have been killed by rocket-propelled grenades (RPGs), snipers or roadside bombs. Security forces will have reported finding another 86 bodies, most of them bound, tortured and shot, "execution style," as the reports read.

On this day, 58 home-made bombs will explode and 33 others will be defused, insurgents will fire on US troops in 61 incidents, nine weapons stockpiles will be discovered and an unknown number of people will be kidnapped in seven ambushes. At three points throughout the day, there will be a brief flash of hope that the kidnapped deputy health minister will be found alive, after all.

The 1,345th day of Operation Iraqi Freedom, Nov. 23, 2006, is a particularly brutal day in the war in Iraq, bloodier than any before it.

It is 2:19 a.m. when an American patrol drives over an improvised explosive device, or IED. Four US soldiers are injured in the blast, sustaining serious injuries to their feet, calves and thighs. They have to be evacuated by helicopter. The next incident happens two hours later, when insurgents storm an Iraqi police guard post and threaten to kill the policemen unless they hand over their weapons. The insurgents make off with four Kalashnikovs.

Starting at 7:00 a.m., members of the Mahdi Army, a Shiite militia named -- somewhat boastfully -- after the savior eagerly anticipated by all Shiites and known by its Arabic acronym JAM, congregate in several places in Shiite neighborhoods in Baghdad. Interior Ministry employees take the men to the Hurriyah district. Soon afterwards, an American soldier reports: "The al-Hurriyah third has now been surrounded by the joint MOI (Interior Ministry) and JAM troops who are poised there for a big battle."

1:13 p.m.: The circle of Shiites surrounding the neighborhood is tightening. A US military report collects "information on a planned attack by joint Ministry of Interior and Jaysh al-Mahdi troops against a Sunni area."

2:00 p.m.: Sunni insurgents have set up their own roadblock in Baghdad. They are armed with machine guns and RPGs. Mortar fire strikes the grounds of the Health Ministry 20 minutes later.

Bloody Series of Attacks

Starting at 3:00 p.m., six car bombs explode consecutively in various locations, including a square, a market and a busy street in Baghdad's Sadr City neighborhood. The Americans report 181 dead and 247 wounded. It later turns out that there are 215 dead and 257 wounded, and that almost all the victims are Shiites. It is the bloodiest series of attacks since the beginning of the war.

Shiite leader Muqtada al-Sadr publicly calls on his fellow Shiites to exercise restraint, but internally he calls for revenge. An American soldier notes: "In response to Sunni attacks, Muqtada al-Sadr personally issued orders calling on JAM special forces to attack all Sunni populated neighborhoods in and around Baghdad."

Right after the attacks, Sadr militias throughout the country are told to make their way to Baghdad immediately. "Multiple ambulances ... loaded with unknown weapons came into Sadr City," the reports continue. Kalashnikovs are distributed. Starting at 5:26 p.m., Shiites fire a number of mortars at predominantly Sunni residential neighborhoods. According to the report, there are 14 dead and 25 wounded.

The Americans take note of the looming battles between Sunnis and Shiites. At 5:30 p.m., a group of JAM fighters and supporters in police uniforms attacks a Sunni mosque. At 6:30 p.m., other fighters have set up a fake checkpoint near the Muhsin Mosque and are abducting civilians. At 8:30 p.m., militias attack the Prophet Muhammad Mosque in the Jihad neighborhood. At 8:55 p.m., other Shiites have congregated near the al-Ashara al-Mubashara Mosque and split themselves up into groups of 10. "The JAM enter peoples' homes and kill them," the report reads. At 10:10 p.m., 300 insurgents "are gathering close to an Iraqi Army checkpoint." Iraqi army soldiers "have withdrawn from the checkpoint and the (insurgents) are planning to attack the al-Shulah area." At 10:35 p.m., JAM militias have converted a police vehicle into a launching ramp for Katyusha rockets and plan to attack Sunnis in the Adhamiya district.

Rudimentary Grid

Twenty-four hours of war, compiled in 360 reports by American soldiers, organized in a rudimentary grid of everyday incidents with titles like "Bomb explosion," "Under enemy fire" and "Discoveries of weapons," and archived in a Pentagon database that, once again, offers a close-up look at the daily routine of an armed conflict. This time, however, the war is one that supposedly ended three-and-a-half years earlier. It is an armed conflict that then US Commander-in-Chief George W. Bush, standing on the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln under a banner that read "Mission Accomplished," declared to be over when he said on May 1, 2003: "Major combat operations in Iraq have ended." On that day, the chronicle of the Iraq war -- that SPIEGEL, the British newspaper the Guardian, the New York Times together with other media now have at their disposal -- had not even begun.

Part 5: The Security Forces as Perpetrators of Terror

On Jan. 17, 2007, police officers in the city of Salman Pak reported the discovery of a body. Assuming that it was a political murder, they called in a team of investigators from the national police to recover and examine the victim. But even the national police were unable to find more than the victim's severed, but otherwise unharmed, head. There was no trace of the rest of the body.

Nevertheless, police had no trouble identifying the victim, who turned out to be a fellow officer. The killers had stuck a piece of wire through the dead man's ear and attached his ID card to it. According to the card, the dead man was Adil Abu Hussein, an officer with the national police. His ID number was 001487. When he was still alive, Hussein was a member of the Wolf Brigade, the most notorious Interior Ministry police unit.

Elite Force

It isn't the first time that members of the 2,000-member special forces unit appear as corpses in the Americans' Iraq war logs. On July 8, 2005, a Baghdad taxicab drove up to the Al Jamouri Hospital in Mosul and dropped off four bodies, each of them peppered with gunshot wounds. The driver reported that a red Opel had forced him to stop his cab, and that armed men had then jumped out of the car, pushed him behind the driver's seat and shot his passengers. Those passengers were also members of the Wolf Brigade.

The troop was established in 2004 as an elite force to combat acts of terrorism inspired by al-Qaida within Iraq. The Americans had trained the unit, which was intended to serve as the Iraqis' strongest weapon in the fight against the bombing terror. But the police unit quickly became a weapon of terror itself. During his short term in office, from 2005 to 2006, Baqir Solagh, a Shiite and the country's then interior minister and commander-in-chief of the Wolf Brigade, recruited most of his police officers from the radical Shiite militias. Sunnis in Baghdad soon feared that the police were deploying death squads to destroy their Sunni enemies. The religious strife between Sunnis and Shiites was moving in the direction of a civil war at the time. The Wolf Brigade set up secret prisons in various locations around the country, where some of the prisoners were abused.

American military doctors scrupulously diagnosed, bruise by bruise, the wounds of Iraqi prisoners that had previously fallen into the hands of the Iraqi counterterrorism unit. In a report dated Dec. 13, 2006, a military doctor notes three times that he has "found signs of abuse" indicating that the victim was "struck by a blunt object." The examined victims had said, apparently truthfully, that they had been beaten with an object similar to a baseball bat. In the last column of his investigative report, the doctor notes that he believes the perpetrators were "National Police Wolf Brigade."

'All the Pain and Agony'

After five suspicious Iraqis were arrested on Dec. 14, 2005 for allegedly placing a roadside bomb, the police investigator on duty threatened the main suspect with a double punishment. First, he said, the man would never see his family again. Second, he would be turned over to the Wolf Brigade, which would subject him to "all the pain and agony" for which the elite unit "is known to exact upon its detainees."

The documents also report on the secret prisons of the Shiite-controlled Interior Ministry, in which prisoners, most of them Sunnis, were subjected to the same kinds of tortures as prisoners had been in the days of Saddam Hussein.

A report dated Nov. 13, 2005 describes the discovery of an "(Interior Ministry) internment facility" where 173 prisoners were being held. The case made headlines around the world at the time, and even the American military reports do not gloss over the condition of their allies: "Many of them (the prisoners) bear marks of abuse to include cigarette burns, bruising consistent with beatings and open sores."

The new material also provides information about camps that have never been described in the international press before. On April 10, 2006, for example, American military officials reported that they had found an illegal secret prison containing 62 prisoners in Baghdad's Rusafa neighborhood. The prisoners were also Sunnis, and four of them exhibited signs of torture.

Hacking Off Fingers

Other documents describe cases of severe torture. In mid-June 2007, for example, Kither al-Bakar, an Iraqi, was arrested on the suspicion of having placed a roadside bomb. He was subsequently interrogated by members of the Iraqi security forces who belonged to the counterterrorism unit in Tal Afar. The Americans took notice of his case about two years later, when they discovered that his right leg had been amputated below the knee, as well as several toes on his left foot. Several fingers were amputated on both hands. There were a number of serious chemical burns on his body and he had severe skin decay.

The victim stated that three Iraqi officers had tortured him by pouring acid on his hands and hacking off some of his fingers, and that they had hidden him whenever the Americans came to inspect their counterterrorism headquarters. After an investigation into the case, the Americans reported that three arrest warrants were issued against the torturers, but they were never enforced. The victim was released in May 2009. The final sentence of the document: "His current location is unknown."

According to a report dated Feb. 24, 2009, Iraqi police stopped a brown Hyundai in Baghdad at the site where a bomb had killed a policeman the day before. They began yelling at the driver, a young man who was unshaven and who was wearing gray pants and sandals. He jumped out of the vehicle and the police shot him several times in the chest. When his body fell to the ground, a policeman began to jump and stomp on the body so much that it was rendered unidentifiable. Then they ordered the witness to leave the area immediately. The American who compiled the report noted: "The Iraqi Police motives were likely anger and a lack of trust in the Iraqi criminal justice system to convict the person responsible and give him the proper punishment."

No Need to Investigate

In hundreds of cases, American doctors identified wounds caused by torture. Prisoners repeatedly complained that they were burned with boiling water, their fingernails were pulled out, the soles of their feet were beaten with electric cable, electroshocks were applied to their genitals and bottles or pieces of wood were inserted into their anuses. But again and again there are cases in which the Americans shielded the torture practices of their Iraqi colleagues. At the bottom of the reports appear the words: No need to investigate.

When questioned, the torturers sometimes came up with the most abstruse excuses. In one case, an Iraqi interrogations specialist claimed that his victim had sustained his injuries after falling from a motorbike as he attempted to flee the police.

But in only one case, at the police interrogation center in Baghdad, did an investigator admit that he had used torture methods to extract confessions from prisoners. In an Oct. 31, 2006 report, an American soldier wrote: "He explained that his weapon of choice for obtaining the confession was a two-foot long, wooden stick with a diameter of a quarter." The Iraqi policeman was arrested.

Sometimes the Iraqis delivered evidence of their brutality on their own. In December 2009, a video fell into the hands of the Americans that depicted the murder of an Iraqi prisoner. Twelve Iraqi army soldiers were involved. The images show how the soldiers led the prisoner, whose hands were bound, into the street, then pushed him to the ground, beat him and finally shot him. The evidence, the American report states, had been "forwarded to the appropriate command for initiation of inquiry/investigation."

The report does not state whether there was any follow-up in the case.

The Role of Blackwater

The most famous of these private defense contractors is Xe Services, which used to be called Blackwater. Blackwater's mercenaries had the reputation of not thinking twice before they acted. They were often under fire, but they were also particularly ruthless in waging war.

A report from the very beginning of the period covered describes a case that made headlines worldwide. On March 31, 2004, insurgents attacked a Blackwater convoy in Fallujah, killed four Americans and hung the bodies from a bridge across the Euphrates River. Then, on Sept. 19, 2005, a suicide bomber slammed his car into a Blackwater convoy in Mosul. His accomplices opened fire on the vehicles, which had come to a stop. Four Americans died.

A few weeks later, also in Mosul, Blackwater employees were the first to open fire. The secret military reports describe the incident as follows: "Blackwater while leaving provincial hall, a vehicle approached the convoy at high rate of speed, and the unit tried waving off the vehicle with hand and arm signals. The vehicle continued to approach the unit, and the unit engaged the vehicle." One civilian was killed and another wounded.

On Feb. 7, 2006, a soldier noted that, near Kirkuk, "two civilians had been shot by a convoy consisting of four black SUVs." They were Blackwater vehicles. "A demonstration began immediately following the shooting by residents of the Rehem-Awa district." Army officials tried to contain the crowd, and discussed "the issue with ... local political leaders at the Iraqi police headquarters."

Sometimes the reports express clear dismay over the behavior of the civilian contractors. A special unit reported that, in May 2005, the mercenaries "shot up a civilian vehicle in Baghdad. Rounds also were fired over (our) heads." There was a family sitting in the car. The father died, and the mother and daughter were injured.

[kuronosan]

Funny. We defend Israel and their bullshit occupation of Palestine, and in turn they turn around and try to take the spotlight off by putting it on us.

I think it's time we just cut Israel off.

[Senji]

Funny. We defend Israel and their bullshit occupation of Palestine, and in turn they turn around and try to take the spotlight off by putting it on us.

I think it's time we just glassed the whole area.

ftfy

[Kuya]

Why glass the Middle East, when it's not the source or dynamo of/behind current conflict?

[Rhinox]

Because they're not American
so who cares.


Sent from my PC36100 using Tapatalk

[Cadsuane]

Why glass the Middle East, when it's not the source or dynamo of/behind current conflict?

I disagree

[Kuya]

Explain

[Cadsuane]

Saying the socio-politico-cultural landscape of the middle east is entirely a product of external forces seems a little disingenuous

[Kuya]

Screw accuracies, i'm fighting hegemonic ideology!

[Cadsuane]

oh fine

[guartz]

Saying the socio-politico-cultural landscape of the middle east is entirely a product of external forces seems a little disingenuous

suicide ideology and "let no foregn army unto muslim soil' is a product of the 1950s.

[Elvis]

I think it's funny that anti-war people eat this stuff up. All these leaks will do is have more killings on both sides.

How insightful. Leaked reports of killings - killings took place - will lead to more - wait for it - KILLINGS, DUN DUN DUN.

But, Egon - WHAT LED TO THE FIRST SET OF KILLINGS YOU DUMB SON OF A BITCH?

Oh and, here are some leaked pictures of IDF soldiers during Operation Cast Lead:

http://www.richardsilverstein.com/ti...ing-cast-lead/

FUCK DEM MUSLIMS

Oh and keeping in the spirit of leaks.

http://www.richardsilverstein.com/ti...strangulation/

Sample pictures of break-down of the Gaza siege:

http://www.richardsilverstein.com/ti...alculation.jpg

http://www.richardsilverstein.com/ti...iege-rules.jpg

Clearly, the siege was never meant to stop Jew-seeking rockets but to further fragment, divide and conquer the Palestinian people of the OT. Meanwhile, Obama being the pussy that he is is barely getting a settlement freeze when all the settlements are illegal under int'l law and all the usual blah blah.

Back to your usual left-right bullshit paradigm.

Oh and antisemitismantisemitismantisemitismantisemitisman tisemitismantisemitismantisemitismantisemitismanti semitism.

EDIT:

Don't those pictures remind you of that scene in Fight Club, where Edward Norton is talking to that lady on the plane about 'the formula'?

Narrator: A new car built by my company leaves somewhere traveling at 60 mph. The rear differential locks up. The car crashes and burns with everyone trapped inside. Now, should we initiate a recall? Take the number of vehicles in the field, A, multiply by the probable rate of failure, B, multiply by the average out-of-court settlement, C. A times B times C equals X. If X is less than the cost of a recall, we don't do one.
Woman on plane: Are there a lot of these kinds of accidents?
Narrator: You wouldn't believe.
Woman on plane:Which car company do you work for?
Narrator: A major one.