The New York Times, The Guardian newspaper of London, German magazine Der Spiegel and French newspaper Le Monde reported Friday that secret U.S. military documents about the war in Iraq detail torture, summary executions and war crimes.
These are the same documents - part of the largest publication of secret material in history - that Pentagon officials have been urging the website WikiLeaks and the media not to publish. They first appeared on the Arab network Al Jazeera.
Among the details from the approximately 400,000, collected from field reports sent in by American units in the field between 2004 and 2009, and leaked to the news outlets are that:
- U.S. authorities failed to investigate hundreds of reports of abuse, torture, rape and even murder by Iraqi police and soldiers whose conduct appears to be systematic and normally unpunished.
- Americans often turned a blind eye to Iraqis being tortured and abused by other Iraqis in secret prisons.
- Iran's military - to a further extent than previously known - intervened aggressively in support of Shiite combatants, offering weapons, training and sanctuary.
- A U.S. helicopter gunship involved in a notorious Baghdad incident had previously killed Iraqi insurgents after they tried to surrender.
- According to one tabulation, there have been 100,000 civilian causalities - greater than the numbers previously made public, many of them killed by American troops but most of them were killed by other Iraqis.