Wikileaks: The Iraq War Logs

The big news this week is the release of 391,832 secret records that cover the U.S.’ Iraq War between 2004 and 2009, now being hailed as the biggest leak of official documents in history (that might be questionable, but certainly the most publicly accessible leak of that size). The logs can be accessed here:

• Wikileaks Iraq War Diaries (main page)
• Diary Dig (Browse the diaries and make complex searches)
• War Logs (Browse the diaries, rate and comment the reports)
• Raw files, download as a torrent from Pirate Bay

Wikileaks teamed up with several news organizations, more this time than with the Afghan War Diary. You can find each organization’s dedicated pages below (Le Monde, at the time of writing, appeared to be the only one not to have a special Iraq War logs section), ranked in order of descending preference:

• The Bureau of Investigative Journalism—Iraq War Logs
• Al Jazeera—The Secret Iraq Files
• The Guardian—Iraq: The War Logs
• Der Spiegel Online International—Iraq War Logs
• The New York Times—The War Logs (includes Afghanistan)
• Channel 4 News (UK)—Iraq Secret War Files
• Iraq Body Count
• Le Monde—“Irak : l’horreur ordinaire révélée par Wikileaks”

Since the media partners with an inside edge on analyzing the original documents will likely retain the monopoly in terms of most meaningful and useful reports, here are some of the first ones to be released that we recommend:

1. Iraq Body Count: “Iraq War Logs: What the numbers reveal”
2. Iraq Body Count: “Iraq War Logs: The truth is in the details”
3. Iraq Body Count: “Iraq War Logs: Context”
4. BBC News: “Huge Wikileaks release shows US ‘ignored Iraq torture’”
5. Der Spiegel: “The WikiLeaks Iraq War Logs: Greatest Data Leak in US Military History”
6. Der Spiegel: “The WikiLeaks Disclosures: New Dimensions in the Iraq War”
7. CNN: “WikiLeaks redacted more information in latest documents release”
8. BIJ: “Pentagon response to publication of the war logs”
9. BIJ: “US soldier fires shots for fun”
10. BIJ: “US Apache guns down surrendering insurgents”
11. BIJ: “US troops ordered not to investigate Iraqi torture”
12. BIJ: “Hundreds of civilians gunned down at checkpoints”
13. BIJ: “Obama administration handed over detainees despite reports of torture”
14. BIJ: “Iraqi civilians used as minesweepers by a US soldier”

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