Tag Archives: Iraq war logs

#cablegate: WikiLeaks essential to a strong media, Assange argues in new op-ed

Just hours after the arrest of Julian Assange in London, the Australian has published an op-ed piece by the WikiLeaks founder in which he places the organisation squarely among the media firmament:

“Democratic societies need a strong media and WikiLeaks is part of that media”, argues Assange. “The media helps keep government honest. WikiLeaks has revealed some hard truths about the Iraq and Afghan wars, and broken stories about corporate corruption.”

The piece begins with a quote from a young Rupert Murdoch, who said in 1958: “In the race between secrecy and truth, it seems inevitable that truth will always win.” A particularly poignant statement, given that WikiLeaks is now in the fight of its life: trying desperately to stay online amid sustained cyber attacks; facing possible prosecution under any law the US attorney general can find to fit the bill; and press coverage of the leaks diverted by the arrest of its founder and editor-in-chief for alleged sex crimes.

The attacks on WikiLeaks have come thick and fast from many fronts, but, as Assange points out in his op-ed, the newspapers that published secret diplomatic cables by its side are not suffering anything like the same treatment:

WikiLeaks is not the only publisher of the US embassy cables. Other media outlets, including Britain’s the Guardian, the New York Times, El Pais in Spain and Der Spiegel in Germany have published the same redacted cables. Yet it is WikiLeaks, as the co-ordinator of these other groups, that has copped the most vicious attacks and accusations from the US government and its acolytes.

Assange goes on to claim that his organisation has coined “a new type of journalism”, which he calls “scientific journalism”.

We work with other media outlets to bring people the news, but also to prove it is true. Scientific journalism allows you to read a news story, then to click online to see the original document it is based on. That way you can judge for yourself: is the story true? Did the journalist report it accurately?

His call for journalism to adopt something more akin to a scientific method are not new. It echoes comments he made back in July, prior to the release of Afghanistan and Iraq war logs and the US embassy cables:

You can’t publish a paper on physics without the full experimental data and results, that should be the standard in journalism. You can’t do it in newspapers because there isn’t enough space, but now with the internet there is.

As he has done for many years in defence of his own organisation, Assange raises the issue of the Pentagon Papers as he closes his piece:

In its landmark ruling in the Pentagon Papers case, the US Supreme Court said “only a free and unrestrained press can effectively expose deception in government”. The swirling storm around WikiLeaks today reinforces the need to defend the right of all media to reveal the truth.

See the full article on the Australian at this link…

WikiLeaks announces new release of nearly three million documents

WikiLeaks has indicated that it is preparing a new release of documents seven times the size of the Iraq war logs release, equal to around 2,800,000 documents.

In posts made on its Twitter account the whistleblower made appeals for donations to help support it as it prepares the new release, adding “the coming months will see a new world, where global history is redefined.”

Last month WikiLeaks released almost 400,000 military documents in relation to the war in Iraq to media outlets across the world, in what WikiLeaks claimed to be the biggest leak of military documents so far.

Telegraph: ‘Crazy Horse 18’ implicated in other Iraq attacks beyond shooting of Reuters staff

Following WikiLeaks’ release of almost 400,000 military documents relating to the war in Iraq on Friday, the Telegraph today reports that it appears that ‘Crazy Horse 18’, the signal which featured in a video released by WikiLeaks earlier this year showing the killing of more than 12 people, including two Reuters staff, has been implicated in a number of other fatal attacks based on the secret records.

Crazy Horse 18 was the call-sign which, after taking legal advice, refused to accept the surrender of two insurgents it cornered while they were firing mortars from a flatbed truck. It killed both men as they sought shelter in a nearby shack during the attack in February 2007.

In June that year, Crazy Horse 18 fired a string of missiles at two more flatbed trucks it thought were carrying missiles, despite recording that it had seen four women in a nearby house waving a white sheet. Six “enemy” died.

In another incident the same month, Crazy Horse 18 fired at a suspect van from which material is being unloaded into a car, and stayed on location “due to possible colatural [sic] damage” – a euphemism for civilian casualties, though the report does not record any.

See the full Telegraph report here…