Why are we surprised that Iran worked to influence events in Iraq after the 2003 invasion? Wikileaks shows the extent of Tehran’s understandable role. When America invades a country, it’s called liberation. When Iran “meddles” in Iraq’s internal affairs, it’s called terrorism.
Wikileaks
Wikileaks is one of the biggest and most important stories in the world, challenging governments and journalists alike. I’ve been writing extensively about the group since 2006, featured an exclusive interview in 2008 with founder Julian Assange and examined the myriad of issues around the website. Assange himself asked me in the early days whether I wanted to be on the group’s board to vet incoming leaks and determine their veracity before publishing. I agreed but unfortunately this never eventuated.
Thank you for outsourcing and protecting our imperial wars
Private mercenaries have been integral to the “war on terror”, so much so that Western aid groups are warning the Afghan government that without them the country will miss billions of dollars in aid: More than a billion dollars worth of aid projects in Afghanistan will have to be cancelled by the end of the…
Wikileaks Iraq logs reveals democracy an after-thought (at best)
Mmm: In a telling, if not surprising finding, Der Spiegel reports that, in the 391,832 documents, the word “democracy” appears only eight times—improvised explosive devices are mentioned 146,895 times.
Does Obama really want to know that his army kill innocents?
What a government with accountability would do is determine what its soldiers may have done in war and investigate. Not stonewall or ignore or deny. “Our boys”, from Britain, America and Australia, have committed countless abuses in the last ten years in the “war on terror”: The UN has called on Barack Obama to order…
Australia misses the Wikileaks story entirely
So the Australian government is not interested in investigating any potential war crimes in Iraq but the messenger who brought the news. Don’t be surprised: Defence Minister Stephen Smith says the release of almost 400,000 US documents about the Iraq War could create a security risk for Australia. The whistleblowing website WikiLeaks has published classified…
What Iraq looked like for Iraqis in 2006
The UK Guardian unpacks the latest Wikileaks Iraq logs, interactively: 17 October 2006 was a typical day in one of the bloodiest years of the Iraq conflict – 136 dead Iraqis, 10 dead Americans and hundreds of violent incidents. Watch the 24 hours of carnage unfold, log by log, minute by minute.
Wikileaks Iraq logs show our damned contempt for Arabs
Welcome to our legacy in the Middle East: A grim picture of the US and Britain’s legacy in Iraq has been revealed in a massive leak of American military documents that detail torture, summary executions and war crimes. Almost 400,000 secret US army field reports have been passed to the Guardian and a number of…
Washington agrees that Wikileaks harmed nobody but US war-making
So after all the huffing and puffing and accusations, Wikileaks is only “guilty” of harming US interests? Surely questioning the rationale behind criminal American foreign policy is highly praise-worthy: No U.S. intelligence sources or practices were compromised by the posting of secret Afghan war logs by the WikiLeaks website, the Pentagon has concluded, but the…
Wikileaks and avoiding September 11
A provocative question in the LA Times: If WikiLeaks had been around in 2001, could the events of 9/11 have been prevented? … Decisions to speak out inside or outside one’s chain of command — let alone to be seen as a whistle-blower or leaker of information — is fraught with ethical and legal questions…