Pentagon

The top-secret military secrets of the United States are revealed. On Sunday 28th November 2010, Wikileaks started publishing 251,287 United States embassy cables, the largest pool of confidential documents ever to be released.

The documents give people an unprecedented insight into the US Government's foreign activities including secret events. 

The cables, which date from 1966 to the end of February this year, contain confidential communications between 274 embassies in countries globally and the State Department in Washington DC. 15,652 of the cables are classified Secret.

To access the Cable gate, go to http://cablegate.wikileaks.org

At 5pm EST Friday 22nd October 2010 WikiLeaks released the largest classified military leak in history. The 391,832 reports ('The Iraq War Logs'), document the war and occupation in Iraq, from 1st January 2004 to 31st December 2009 (except for the months of May 2004 and March 2009) as told by soldiers in the United States Army. Each is a 'SIGACT' or Significant Action in the war. They describe events as seen and heard by the US military troops on the ground in Iraq and are the first real glimpse into the secret history of the war that the United States government has been privy to throughout.

The reports detail 109,032 deaths in Iraq, comprised of 66,081 “civilians”; 23,984 'enemy' (those labeled as insurgents); 15,196 “host nation'”(Iraqi government forces) and 3,771 “friendly'”(coalition forces). The majority of the deaths (66,000, over 60%) of these are civilian deaths. That is 31 civilians dying every day during the six year period. For comparison, the 'Afghan War Diaries', previously released by WikiLeaks, covering the same period, detail the deaths of some 20,000 people. Iraq during the same period, was five times as lethal with equivalent population size. You can also download the complete logs via bittorrent.

 

It is interesting that Pentagon could not prevent publication of the documents in spite of the fact that they new about the intention of publishers (apparently Daniel Ellsberg) to make all these documents public.