Several media outlets have released information based on documents from WikiLeaks about the Iraq war this afternoon. See WikiLeaks Twitter feed
PRATAP CHATTERJEE
Chatterjee is a regular columnist for the British Guardian, which has had access to the WikiLeaks documents.
He is the author of three forthcoming articles, which will appear in Comment is Free in the Guardian. The articles will focus on civilian casualties in Iraq, the role of private contractors and the use of drones. He said: “In times of war, truth has always been the first casualty. Many failures, many mistakes have been hidden from public view or swept under the rug. These documents shed enormous light on what our tax dollars have wrought.”
Chatterjee is author of Iraq, Inc: A Profitable Occupation (2004) and Halliburton’s Army: How a Well-Connected Texas Oil Company Revolutionized the Way America Makes War (2009). He recently joined the Center for American Progress as a fellow.
NIR ROSEN
Just back from Iraq, Rosen is author of the new book Aftermath: Following the Bloodshed of America’s Wars in the Muslim World. His previous book is In the Belly of the Green Bird: The Triumph of the Martyrs in Iraq. Rosen is a fellow at New York University’s Center on Law and Security.
RAED JARRAR
The Guardian reports: “U.S. and UK officials have insisted that no official record of civilian casualties exists but the logs record 66,081 non-combatant deaths out of a total of 109,000 fatalities.”
Jarrar, also recently back from Iraq, is an Iraqi-American blogger, political analyst and architect. He was in Iraq during the 2003 invasion where he established and directed the first door-to-door civilian casualties survey in Iraq. He said today: “For seven years, the U.S. government has denied the extent of Iraqi civilian casualties. Today’s release shows that they were not only aware of a great number of Iraqi casualties, but they were actually keeping a secret tally of them. We should keep in mind that the number of killings recorded by the U.S. does not necessarily provide an accurate reflection of how many Iraqis have been killed. According to various reputable sources, there may be other hundreds of thousands of undocumented cases of Iraq deaths. In addition, we can’t take the U.S. government’s word about who is a civilian and who is a so-called insurgent or terrorist. There are many documented cases where the U.S. mislabeled unarmed Iraqi civilians. Wikileaks has also provided evidence proving that the U.S. authorities turned a blind eye to abuses in U.S. and Iraqi prisons and to crimes committed by military personnel and private contractors.”
JOSH STIEBER
Stieber is a veteran of in the Bravo Company documented in the video “Collateral Murder,” released earlier this year by WikiLeaks. He just wrote the piece “Iraq Vet to Congress: Don’t Cover Up Wikileaks’ Iraq Revelations.”
For more information, contact at the Institute for Public Accuracy:
Sam Husseini, (202) 347-0020; or David Zupan, (541) 484-9167
