Thank you Wikileaks – Now Let’s End Wars and Occupations

Posted on October 25, 2010
Share:

By Debra Sweet 

Thanks to the heroic leakers in the US military and to Julian Assange and the hundreds of Wikileaks staffers and volunteers: Iraq War Logs was released Friday. Its 391,000 records reveal the standard operating procedures of a huge military occupation over the years 2004 – 2009.

Ray McGovern writes that Assange was presented the Sam Adams Award for integrity from Veteran Intelligence Professions for Sanity Saturday in London by Daniel Ellsberg and Craig Murray. The New York Times reported Sunday that Assange is a "hunted man," having been denied residency in Sweden, or in any country where the U.S. government’s influence is significant enough to endanger him.  The Robert Gates (Defense) and Robert Gibbs (Obama’s Press Secretary) team repeats the same threat they did in July when Afghan War Diary came out: Wikileaks somehow "may have blood on their hands," for letting the truth out. 

 
But who is the more dangerous force with blood on its hands?  The U.S./NATO occupiers, whose presence destroyed civil society in Iraq, and fueled the sectarian violence, based on aggressive war, planned to last a generation by Bush and Cheney! See They Hate Us for Our Occupations by Glenn Greenwald.

The major news media, including the NY Times, is spinning their own messages, consistent with their unquestioning reportage of the unjust, immoral US war — based on lies — these many years.  World Can’t Wait is coompiling the best analysis we can find on our site, and will keep digging for what people living in this country need to know.

Key themes in the Iraq War Logs show:


Abuse, rape, torture, murder of detainees: Hundreds of incidents of abuse and torture of prisoners by Iraqi security services, up to and including rape and murder. These are so egregious that the UN is calling for further investigation.

Civilians are dying in greatest numbers: Rumsfeld always said "we don’t do numbers" on civilian deaths.  Iraq War Log reveals that they kept some numbers. The US & allies killed civilians much more frequently than those they identified in the Log as "insurgents."  Still, we’ll never know the total.

Hundreds of civilians killed at checkpoints: Robert Fisk says, "Out of the 832 deaths recorded at checkpoints in Iraq between 2004 and 2009, analysis by the Bureau of Investigative Journalism suggests 681 were civilians. Fifty families were shot at and 30 children killed. Only 120 insurgents were killed in checkpoint incidents."

Private contractors non-uniformed, unsupervised, wreak havoc: Blackwater (now Xe) and the thousands of civilian "security" operatives got away with murder, over and over again. And there are even more contractors in Afghanistan now than the larger troop force Obama sent in.

Because this all continues in Afghanistan: Inside a Secret DOD Prison in Afghanistan by Scott Horton
 

Stop the Crimes of Your Government: Collateral Murder and Targeted Assassination
Below is a link to clips from the enlightening and informative webcast World Can’t Wait produced October 20 with Pardiss Kebriaei and Ethan McCord. Stay tuned for more from Ethan McCord.
Ethan McCord interviewed on GritTV with Laura Flanders 10/21/10: "The one thing I couldn’t live without in Iraq was my own humanity"

 

1 thought on “Thank you Wikileaks – Now Let’s End Wars and Occupations”

  1. Indeed, the world owes a great debt to Assange and his colleagues. It is interesting to read the responses of the other major news media that received the documents: Le Monde, the Guardian, Der Spiegel for instance. The responses to the issues raised (not cries of outrage that they were raised and what is wrong with Assange) are universal elsewhere. The Guardian gives much coverage to demands of officials and others in the UK who are calling for investigations of British culpability. Such response makes that of the NY Times even more obviously one of protecting the illegitimate US empire.

Leave a Reply