The Biggest-ever leak of classified documents
Anger: US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said the disclosures put lives in danger
The United States suffered the largest ever leak of classified documents in its history last night as 400,000 military reports were posted on whistle-blowing website WikiLeaks.
The massive disclosure of field reports from Iraq was heavily condemned by Secretary of State Hilary Clinton who said publishing the secret documents could imperil the lives of US and British soldiers.
The records purport to show that commanders did not investigate torture by the Iraqi authorities, that 'hundreds' of civilians were killed at US military checkpoints and that the US kept records of civilian deaths, despite previously denying it.
But Hilary Clinton condemned 'in the most clear terms the disclosure of any information by individuals and or organisations which puts the lives of United States and its partners' service members and civilians at risk'.
And a Pentagon spokesman said the revelations could result in the deaths of US and British troops.
'This security breach could very well get our troops and those they are fighting with killed. Our enemies will mine this information looking for insights into how we operate, cultivate sources and react in combat situations, even the capability of our equipment,' he said.
The new leak is believed to come 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 reports of detainee abuse, often supported by medical evidence, describe abuse by Iraqi police and soldiers.
Prisoners were often 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.
However, a Pentagon spokesman told the New York Times this week that under its procedure, when reports of Iraqi abuse were received the US military 'notifies the responsible government of Iraq agency or ministry for investigation and follow-up'.
Records: The documents reveal previously-secret activity of US troops during the conflict
The logs also illustrate how an Apache helicopter gunship gunned down two men in February 2007.
The suspected insurgents had been trying to surrender but a lawyer back at base told the pilots: 'You cannot surrender to an aircraft.'
The Apache, callsign Crazyhorse 18, was the same unit and helicopter based at Camp Taji outside Baghdad that later that year, in July, mistakenly killed two Reuters employees and wounded two children in the streets of Baghdad.
Iraq Body Count, the London-based group that monitors civilian casualties, says it has identified around 15,000 previously unknown civilian deaths from the data contained in the leaked war logs.
Although US generals have claimed their army does not carry out body counts and British ministers still say no official statistics exist, the war logs show these claims are untrue.
The field reports purport to identify all civilian and insurgent casualties, as well as numbers of coalition forces wounded and killed in action.
Previous disclosure: 90,000 records from the Afghan war were leaked earlier this year on WikiLeaks
They give a total of more than 109,000 violent deaths from all causes between 2004 and the end of 2009.
WikiLeaks says it is posting online the entire set of 400,000 Iraq field reports – in defiance of the Pentagon.
The whistle-blowing activists say they have deleted all names from the documents that might result in reprisals.
They were accused by the US military of possibly having 'blood on their hands' over the previous Afghan release by redacting too few names. But the military recently conceded that no harm had been identified.
via : dailymail.co.uk
