Monday, October 25, 2010

Frago 242

US war crimes in Iraq revealed by WikiLeaks

By Justin Raimondo

"The biggest US security breach in our history, carried off by WikiLeaks, reveals a wealth of information – hundreds of thousands of field reports, the raw material collected by the US military on the ground in Iraq. It will be quite a while before the “gems” are mined from this treasure trove, but initially the one that stands out as the jewel in the crown is the revelation of “Frago 242” – an order from high up in the US military command instructing officers not to investigate reports of torture and other human rights violations by their Iraqi allies. As the Guardian, one of the media outlets given privileged access to the database prior to its general release, reports.....

Although I should have expected it, it never ceases to amaze me how relentless the smear campaign against WikiLeaks and its founder, Julian Assange, has been: and if anything it has intensified since the release of the latest war logs. The coverage in the New York Times and the Washington Post puts just as much if not more emphasis on the trumped-up allegations against Assange as on the actual content of the released materials. Assange, to his credit, simply walked out of a CNN interview in the course of which the “reporter” insisted on discussing his personal life – rather than the fact that the equivalent of a mass grave of 15,000 bodies had just been uncovered......


What should not and must not be forgotten is the person who gave us access to these horrific secrets: Pfc. Bradley Manning, the 22-year-old intelligence officer who is suspected of handing over the logs to WikiLeaks. He, along with Assange, is being vilified and smeared in the media: under arrest, in solitary confinement, and subject to “military justice,” he can’t speak for himself. It is up to us – to all who believe that we have the right to know what our government is doing in our name and with our tax dollars – to speak up on his behalf."

No comments: