And it’s a huge second round. From the Daily Mail…
"Wikileaks has announced it is to release a second batch of Iraq war logs which will be seven times bigger than the first. In
a defiant posting on its official Twitter account, the website’s
founders said it was ‘under intense pressure’ over the disclosure but
vowed to press ahead anyway. ‘The coming months will see a new world,
where global history is redefined. Keep us strong,’ they added. Such a
vast information dump would create another firestorm in Britain and the
U.S. where generals are still furious over the first set of 400,000
classified documents, the biggest military leak of all time. They
detailed what Wikileaks founder Julian Assange called ‘compelling
evidence of war crimes’ by the U.S. led coalition and the Iraq
government and sparked calls for a full inquiry. Among the revelations
were the claim that U.S. generals failed to investigate torture and
killings by Iraqi police and soldiers. They also revealed 15,000
previously unknown civilian deaths and told how a helicopter gunship
involved in the shooting of journalists also shot insurgents after they
tried to surrender.
I’m sure we can all imagine what’s going to happen when seven times
that amount of information gets dumped onto the internet. Global
history truly is being redefined before our eyes. It will now be
uncensored and unabridged. We have entered an age of immediacy,
transparency, and interactivity. There’s no stopping it…
"A
second far larger set of war logs could contain even more damaging
revelations about similar crimes, or throw up entirely new incidents
involving coalition troops. They
also raise the possibility of individual officers being named as
perpetrators of ‘war crimes’ and special forces agents in the field
having their identities revealed.
The stakes are high, and Wikileaks has already proven itself unafraid to go all in…
"Should
Wikileaks go ahead with its promise, it will be the third time it has
published such information in the face of opposition from military top
brass around the world. Its first Iraq war logs covered the period in
the occupation between 2004 and 2009 and contained revelations that
America failed to investigate hundreds of reports of abuse, rape,
torture and murder by Iraqi police and soldiers. The information
revealed that more than 15,000 civilians died in previously unknown
incidents – U.S. and UK officials have insisted that no official record
of civilian casualties exists but the logs record 66,081 non-combatant
deaths out of a total of 109,000 fatalities.
What do you think? Do you agree with this release of classified
information, or do you feel it’s too dangerous? Is it possible some
good can come of this?
Source: http://www.eriereader.com/topics/wikileaks-founder-julian-assange-predicts-new-world-second-round-iraq-war-documents
November 24, 2010 at 8:11 PM
I think the document release will open the public’s eyes to what’s really happening over there — put public pressure on the US gov to end the conflict quicker, resulting in more lives over all saved. Bad things happen in the dark. They should obviously make every effort to protect the names and identities of individuals however. But doing this is standing up to tyranny.