DS: See it for yourself. The only thing weird about it is CJ's weird putdown.
Der Spiegel
Der Spiegel's English-language coverage of the Iraq war logs is relatively thin, compared to the Times and The Guardian's packages, at least as of Friday evening. But it does feature a very thorough interactive map of casualties and "events," called "An Atlas of Horror." If that proves too hard to absorb, the map can also be collapsed into "One Day in Iraq," a day in November 2006 with several civilian deaths by IED attack as well as a surprising number of "criminal events (murders)" in which unidentified civilian corpses were discovered by coalition troops. Der Spiegel also, like Al Jazeera, embellishes on the story of the "Crazyhorse" apache helicopters, who were involved in several "dubious" attacks. And one feature in the package takes a step back and dicsusses the ethics of publishing the secret reports, analyzing the shifts in reactions of the U.S. government to this latest leak, as opposed to the previous leak of 75,000 reports from Afghanistan. - Lauren Kirchner
The Bureau of Investigative Journalism
The Bureau of Investigative Journalism, a U.K.-based nonprofit, had three months to analyze the Iraq war logs. The result is approximately twenty stories, all of which are published and freely distributable under a Creative Commons license. ("Steal our stories," the homepage blares.)
The site seems primarily concerned with documenting ostensible war crimes -- or at least bad behavior -- on the part of coalition soldiers. The lead story, titled "Biggest document leak in history exposes real war," calls the documents "the uncensored detail Washington did not want us to know." Other stories on the site emphasize civilian deaths and torture at coalition hands: an Apache helicopter crew that killed insurgents who were trying to surrender; Iraqi-instigated prisoner abuse that went uninvestigated by the U.S. military; and so on. A story dubbing December 2006 the war's bloodiest month notes that 3,784 people died during that time period, a body count that far exceeds that which was officially reported. There's also a Flash timeline of important events in the Iraq war, a glossary of relevant military terminology, and at least one article that is translated into Arabic. Justin Peters
Channel 4 (U.K.)
The U.K. television station Channel 4 will air a program about the documents on Monday. In advance of that, its website has published several articles and video clips reporting on and analyzing the data. The lead story features a graphic seven-minute video that claims the documents "expose the lie that the U.S. kept no body counts" in Iraq. Particularly affecting is an interview with the uncle of a boy who was killed by a Hellfire missile: "The children came towards us screaming 'Alawi has been blown to pieces.' We collected the remains bit by bit. His head was more than 100 metres away."
Other stories emphasize Iraqi-on-Iraqi tortrure that was apparently condoned by U.S. forces ("On 7 November 2005 George W Bush said: "Any activity we conduct is within the law. We do not torture..." The above examples of Iraq war logs may suggest that the former President's claim was inaccurate."), and report that more civilians were killed at checkpoints than insurgents. In another story, Channel 4 reports that it actually traveled to Iraq and found the two survivors of an incident in which a car came under fire for failing to stop at a checkpoint (the car's driver was killed), and notes the drastic difference between the survivors' version of events and the military's version of events.
Chief correspondent Alex Thomson offers a robust what-it-all-means analysis, and ends on this note:
The reality today is that there are one million war widows across Iraq. Many come to the central mortuary in Baghdad to try and find and identify the body of missing loved ones. Because of the numbers of names in these leaked secret Sigacts, that search might just get a little easier in future.
That is just one of several significant truths revealed by this sudden avalanche of hitherto secret information. In that regard, its significance is hard to underestimate.
We'll be watching for the station's full program on Monday. Justin Peters
Naked Capitalism notes:
The New York Times claims, --the Iraq documents provide no earthshaking revelations, but they offer insight, texture and context from the people actually fighting the war." The Guardian headline suggests they are more signficant: "Iraq war logs: secret files show how US ignored torture." And the Financial Times goes further: "US soldiers killed unarmed civilians, WikiLeaks claim". So why does the Grey Lady minimize this account? Is it that the US use of torture is so routine that the Times does not consider the ugly details in the WikiLeaks documents to be much of a revelation? FYI, the Guardian summary provides a better overview than the NY Times. It also has a gripping interactive log which covers the abuses that took place on a typical day in 2006.(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
