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| Missing weapons, ethnic cleansing details may be part of Wikileaks' Iraq files |
| 2010-10-17 |
| THE Pentagon is scouring an Iraq war database to prepare for potential fallout from an expected release by WikiLeaks of some 400,000 secret military reports. Officials set up the taskforce several weeks ago in order to prepare for tonight's anticipated release of sensitive intelligence on the US-led Iraq war. They have been told to comb through the database and "determine what the possible impacts might be", Pentagon spokesman Colonel David Lapan said. The Department of Defense is concerned the leak compiles "significant activities" from the war, or SIGACTS, which include incidents such as known attacks against coalition troops, Iraqi security forces, civilians or infrastructure in the country. The data was culled from an Iraq-based database that contained "significant acts, unit-level reporting, tactical reports, things of that nature," Col Lapan said. He noted that Pentagon officials did not know how many and which documents would be released. The massive release is set to dwarf the whistleblower website's publication of 77,000 classified US military documents on the war in Afghanistan in July, including the names of Afghan informants and other details from raw intelligence reports. Another 15,000 are due out soon. That release, while gaining enormous media coverage and publicity for Wikileaks and its Australian founder Julian Assange, was largely ignored by a war-weary public. However, aside from the further unrest it could ignite in Iraq and added discomfort for the 50,000 US troops and diplomats still stationed there, the Iraq files have much more explosive potential than the Afghanistan release. Wired has pinpointed several areas of interest, such as the possibility of Iran's involvement in developing Improvised Explosive Devices, the loss of 200,000 US rifles and pistols in 2007 and evidence of ethnic cleansing. Col Lapan urged WikiLeaks to return the documents to the US military, which he said found no need to redact them in the interim. "Our position is redactions don't help, it's returning the documents to their rightful owner," he said. "We don't believe WikiLeaks or others have the expertise needed. "It's not as simple as just taking out names. There are other things and documents that aren't names that are also potentially damaging." For the Iraq leak, Wikileaks is believed to be teaming up with the same news outlets as it did for the Afghanistan document dump - The New York Times, Britain's Guardian and Der Spiegel of Germany. Newsweek magazine has reported that all partners would release the material simultaneously. |
| Posted by:tipper |
| #2 firing squad |
| Posted by: Squinty Whusort3201 2010-10-17 23:55 |
| #1 Everyone involved in this treason should be hanged. |
| Posted by: Rob Crawford 2010-10-17 22:18 |