This weekend Wikileaks released the Iraq War Logs – 40,000 “Significant Incident Reports” from the period of 2004-2009 that together tell the most detailed story of the war in Iraq during that time.
As was the case with the Afghan War Logs, a number of news media outlets received advanced access to the documents and extensive competing coverage can be found in the The Guardian, Al Jazeera, Der Spiegel, and last and least, The New York Times, which decided to lead with a hit piece on the personality of the founder of Wikileaks, rather than on what the war logs themselves reveal. CNN played the same game. (Not suprising, of course, from an institutions that were essential to enabling the war itself.)
Like Afghan War wikileak, there is so much to read, so video summaries can be useful: The Guardian has a short video on prevalence of “Frago 242″, which is a “fragmentary order” not to investigate torture, and some of the consequences thereof. Al Jazeera presents an hour long special here. And here is good highlight reel from U.K. Channel 4′s current affairs program, “Dispatches“:
The U.N.’s chief torture investigator thinks there is torture to investigate, and reminds Obama of his legal obligation to do so. Dig through the logs yourself here.
