Wikileaks Iraq War Diaries

DeletedUser

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 December 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.
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- Source: Wikileaks

All day on the News I have seen people condemning them for doing this, the US and the UK have also done the same and there is a huge uproar about it and its timing.

The fact of the matter is? Have they done anything wrong? Some claim this puts the lives on Soldiers in danger? were they not in danger simply by being in Iraq? it doesn't name any names like new channels are claiming to do, it simply adds light to a matter deeply controlled by our governments about what we see and know about.

If you ask me, its a good thing really.
 

DeletedUser

im torn on this one


in one sense its good that the info should be avalible to the public

on the other hand yoiu never know what info that seems irrelevant to us could accualy be highly destructive in the wrong hands

i think ALL clasified info should definately be released as soon as its not a current issue to create transpancy while protecting active service and troops and ongoing missions etc
 

DeletedUser

It's hard to say. This is because the website wants me to create an account to see what the things are, which I am not going to do. On top of this I'm certainly not looking through 5 years worth of reports. If what they have leaked are things like plans or strategies or anything like that then that is stupid and of course wrong. If it is mundane details and statistics then thats okay. But really how classified is something that "wikileaks" can get a hold of it?

Maybe someone can break down whats in the reports?
 

DeletedUser

My thoughts are pretty simple, really. They shouldn't had hid these numbers at any point. As they knew how many civilian deaths were occurring, they should have presented that information and taken responsibility for their part of those deaths. It is not stated, in the wikileaks, how many of those civilian deaths were due to coalition forces, how many to iraqi forces, and how many to insurgents. A responsible approach to this, during the Bush era, would have been to take responsibility for their actions, point out the actions of the others, and make it transparent throughout. Having these numbers come out now merely looks like what it is, a cover-up, and it shows that they were not attempting to address this problem, instead holding to the position of, "out of sight, out of mind."

I'm disgusted, but it's not really old news. It's information that was previously presented by other reports that were condemned by the Bush administration and were claimed to be grossly inaccurate. Now we're finding out that, yet again, it was the Bush administration that should have been condemned, for posing more lies to the general public and for obstructing efforts for the truth to be presented.
 

DeletedUser

accualy from what i understand most of this data is current data from durring the obama administration as well as some older bush era data

not to mention that as far as the civillian casualties

some , most , or even nearly all of them could very well be from the insurgents attacks and bombs
 
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DeletedUser22575

Hellstromm said:
My thoughts are pretty simple, really. They shouldn't had hid these numbers at any point. As they knew how many civilian deaths were occurring, they should have presented that information and taken responsibility for their part of those deaths. It is not stated, in the wikileaks, how many of those civilian deaths were due to coalition forces, how many to iraqi forces, and how many to insurgents. A responsible approach to this, during the Bush era, would have been to take responsibility for their actions, point out the actions of the others, and make it transparent throughout. Having these numbers come out now merely looks like what it is, a cover-up, and it shows that they were not attempting to address this problem, instead holding to the position of, "out of sight, out of mind."

I'm disgusted, but it's not really old news. It's information that was previously presented by other reports that were condemned by the Bush administration and were claimed to be grossly inaccurate. Now we're finding out that, yet again, it was the Bush administration that should have been condemned, for posing more lies to the general public and for obstructing efforts for the truth to be presented.
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Pretty much sums up the sorry mess.
 

DeletedUser

thats because letting politicians and public opinion run a war is a GREAT way to LOOSE every war
 
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