ON AIR: Should Wikileaks make a difference to your views on the Iraq war?
| 13:35 UK time, Monday, 25 October 2010
ÌýThis topic was discussed on World Have Your Say on 25 October.ÌýListen to the programme.Ìý
The is back on the front pages.
The whistle-blowing website Wikileaks has released 400,000 army documents relating to the conflict in Iraq. The documents reveal details of civilian deaths and prisoner abuse, and suggest that the US ignored evidence of torture by Iraqi authorities.
So much for Western Â'civilised' values ,
'The Iraq war was fought in the name of Âcivilised values and Âcommon decency. The British and Americans presented themselves as the good guys, bringing Âdemocracy and the rule of law and Âhumanity to a Âdysfunctional country ruled by a lunatic Âgenocidal tyrant...If this neat contrast between good and evil has already worn pretty thin in the seven-and-a-half years since the invasion of Iraq, it has now finally been blown apart by a massive leak of nearly 400,000 official ÂAmerican military 'field reports' by WikiLeaks.'
the documents have emerged too late to make a difference,
'As far as Americans are concerned, the Iraq war is over, done, finished. We've turned the page, changed the channel, tied up the odd loose end, inserted the last punctuation mark, and moved on.'
The Iraqi media seem equally as but the conversation is already underway on our Facebook page, where Halima writes,
'Too long have the powers that be thought they could do whatever they wanted with an underlying assumption that they are the "good guys" even when clearly they have not always been. ...I like the idea that behaviour of the most powerful is now answerable to international scrutiny.' Michael in Wisconsin isn't convinced by the reports,
'War is hell, and as far as war goes, Iraq and Afghanistan have been extremely tame, mostly due to the fact that the soldier has one hand tied behind his back and needs to take his lawyer with him to the war zone to avoid any implications of impropriety while trying not to die.'
Assistant Professor of Politics and International Affairs at Princeton University believes that we shouldn't be quick to judge the documents; the database is selective and could be missing a bigger picture.
And the finds some empathy for the soldiers on the front line, but little for politicians who sent them there.
'Some of the most painful instances published, indeed, in which Iraqi civilians have been killed at US checkpoints, are also horribly understandable: when frightened soldiers - alert to potential suicide bombers - encounter terrified civilians in a fog of barked commands and misunderstandings, a tragic outcome can become almost inevitable...A very different standard applies, however, to those who sent them there, and drew up the codes by which they were required to operate... If morality is difficult to preserve in war, it was then made significantly more so by the failure of George Bush and Tony Blair to put in place any comprehensive plan for the governance of Iraq after the invasion. That was not a forgivable error, but a fundamental one.'
a retired, veteran of the CIA's Clandestine Service stands by theÌýtroops - this was war.
'There is more than a little irony in the fact that it is precisely those who are most likely to characterize the US military presence in Iraq as an unwanted military occupation, trampling on the sovereign rights of Iraqis, who in this instance suggest that US military personnel should have behaved like colonialists. In dealing with an Iraqi system in which abuses by security forces were rampant at all levels, what were US forces to do, practically speaking? Should they have taken over every suspect police station? Should they have indicted and tried those suspected of prisoner abuse? In whose courts?'
