Wikileaks Drops 400k Iraq War Documents Into Media's Laps

By Steve Hynd

Thanks to Kat for the heads-up, but you'll be hearing all about all this over the weekend from various pundits and media outlets. The NY Times, Guardian, Al Jazeera, Der Spiegel and Le Monde have all been given over 400,000 previously classified US documents from the Iraq war, dwarfing the previous 90,000 document leak on the Afghan war which had been the biggest Pentagon leak ever. The documents cover the period 1st January 2004 to 31st December 2009 (except for the months of May 2004 and March 2009).

Just like with the Afghan document drop, the UK's Guardian has the best coverage. Start here.

The electronic archive is believed to emanate from the same dissident US army intelligence analyst who earlier this year is alleged to have leaked a smaller tranche of 90,000 logs chronicling bloody encounters and civilian killings in the Afghan war.

The new logs detail how:

� US authorities failed to investigate hundreds of reports of abuse, torture, rape and even murder by Iraqi police and soldiers whose conduct appears to be systematic and normally unpunished.

� A US helicopter gunship involved in a notorious Baghdad incident had previously killed Iraqi insurgents after they tried to surrender.

� More than 15,000 civilians died in previously unknown incidents. US and UK officials have insisted that no official record of civilian casualties exists but the logs record 66,081 non-combatant deaths out of a total of 109,000 fatalities.

The numerous reports of detainee abuse, often supported by medical evidence, describe prisoners shackled, blindfolded and hung by wrists or ankles, and subjected to whipping, punching, kicking or electric shocks. Six reports end with a detainee's apparent death.

The NYT's coverage starts here. Der Spiegel's is here. Wikileaks here.

On a quick read-through, this new document dump is similiar to the Afghanistan one in that there doesn't seem to be a lot really new in it for those who were paying attention all these years. Iraqis abusing detainees being ignored by the US military, hardly-accidental "collateral" damage killing civilians, Iran supporting those Iraqis it was already paying with weapons and training - none of this is new news except for some detail.

Glenn Greenwald's right that new details offered by some of the documents are "news" in a real sense and i wouldn't want to say that because there's nothing big picture new we should all just ignore these documents and "move along". However, the main effect of dropping all these documents at once and the media coverage that they will engender will still be measured by renewed general political attention and pressure on Iraq, where things still aren't going as rosily as most Americans seem to believe.