Iraq war logs: A day in the life of the war

Extraordinary. Still don't want Saddam back though.

An overwhelming experience.

What a piece of work is man.

Congratulations to all at the Guardian who remain committed to serious journalism.

Shame, shame. Why aren't we trying Tony Blair as a war criminal?

I can't begin to imagine living among the carnage that the people of Iraq have had to suffer.

We have become desensitised to the violence and chaos, having been fed a loop of wailing mothers and car bombings. The reality is that Iraq is hell on earth. Once a model country, it now represents the absolute lowest state of existence for humans.

What we have done to these people is unforgivable.

MOUZONE

Still don't want Saddam back though.

Er... as far as I'm aware, no-one has suggested that as an option. However, perhaps you might acknowledge that the Sainted Tony was a cast iron hypocrite for spouting all those hollow words about stopping torture, and then looking the way when his allies and subordinates were emulating Saddam's behaviour.

This is insane.

USA and NATO are war criminals

Not sure what all fuss is about. Nothing new here. In all wars terrible things happen, innocents are killed, soldiers behave appallingly.

"Shame, shame. Why aren't we trying Tony Blair as a war criminal?"

"USA and NATO are war criminals"

Maybe I'm missing the point, but don't most of the events logged here appear to be violence committed by Iraqis - often against other Iraqis?

I'm not surprised! What surprised me is that this was known for a long time, and all decided to keep it 'secret' (quiet), to avoid scandals. We as citizens should know that our rights are almost ZERO! In the name of national security all means are accepted all is becoming legal on the spot! The army can kill innocent people but it's becoming difficult to prove the opposite. Yes these days we can prove everything with detailed satelite photos and communications, but these are in the hand of the army and again classifayed as 'secret'. Every incident it's beeing analaysed with detailed satelite photos and all communications is beeing examined. Only for the region of Afghanistan + Pakistan + Iraq + Iran + Israel, there are 24 hours satelite on line pictures available, each country is devided into areas and for each area in devided again to sub areas and so on and there are hundrets of people monitoring this 24/7, each person watching no more than 45 min with a short break.

Now US officials will come and say that the documents are fake - NOT true, this was not happened. As then many citizens will ask for compensation $$, and this will force the US gov to priny more bills, and economy will be bad for all the world.

In time of war many illegal things happen.

@NEO11

Yep, that's pretty much what he bolsheviks said. They started again and look what happened.

I'm sorry but "the people" are also the politicians, bankers etc. There is no "them and us", and certainly no "Black Alliance".

We are just a not very nice species.

I'm not suggesting that we shouldn't strive very hard to make things better.

Neo11, you're no Messiah, at best your a T-shirt. Keep it in yer pants pal.

Another piece of fine journalism by the Guardian. If only we had such a beautiful interface for every log in the record, then perhaps more and more people would understand the full extent to which Bush and Blair have blood on their hands.

What did the americans and british achieve any way ? a secular stable nation turned into a chaotic geographic entity of shia-sunni sectarion conflicts ? saddam was a dictator alright but at least he led a secular nation, a rarity among muslims. Don't the americans support the worst despots around the world ?

Mouzone, what a staggeringly stupid comment. He's dead, FFS! And STILL the carnage continues.

Billybanjaz and others who blame iraqis for their own deaths, if you understood anything about US and other imperialisms, British in India, Ireland, French in Africa etc etc You see that the invading, occupying power set one section/faction of the 'native' people against the other, playing on the allegiances and jealousies of a very few, to foster civil conflict -the better that the occupiers can rule themselves.

The US deliberately skewed new Iraqi governments from 2003 in favour of Shia, to spite the Sunni muslims who were seen to be the former favourites of Saddam. They trained Shia death squads to eliminate Sunni opponents, then the cycle of tit for tat killings got underway.

Of course the military-supine media back home were only too happy to report that Iraqis were incapable of ruling themselves, such that 'we' had to have our 'civilising' presence over there, never mind the hundreds of thousands who were murdered by the US/UK forces which barely got reported on.

This is classic colonialism, imperialism etc. And the nightmare goes on.

I think this data has been blocked here in Singapore.

@Billybanjax Crimes against peace, also known as aggression, as described by the Nuremberg Tribunal in 1946, are “the supreme international crime, differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole.”

That means that all subsequent crimes that take place under aggression are the responsibility of the aggressor. Including Iraqi on Iraqi violence under our occupation.

Excellent way to represent a typical day in a war zone. Should open the eyes of those who still justify wars. I come from another war zone and know how it feels for the ordinary people. Thank you for making data accessible.

@mac64 The United States did not need to turn anyone against each other in Iraq. I'm not condoning the invasion in any way, things of this nature need to be looked through thoroughly for certain, but there was no need to turn Shia vs. Sunni. That was done actually immediately following the prophet's death. Your claims otherwise are ludicrous, with or without the Coalition violence in Iraq would have been widespread. And judging the war on the ground using this medium is ridiculous as they never tell the entire story. Most people will never understand what really goes on in situations like this, only the men on the ground know what it's really like.

Billybanjax although many, including members of the Labour cabinet such as Jack Straw, treat the law as take it or leave it commodity there is a requirement under international law for governments to investigate cases of reported torture. This the US and Uk are under remit to look into what their own troops are telling them. It is amoral as well as illegal to turn a blind eye to torture.

Dear Tony Blair,

Don't you feel somewhat responsible for this. After all I don't think George W. Bush really understood what he was doing.
You must have forseen the circumstances.
Others Did!

To quote Shakespeare:

I will tell you news of your son:
give me your blessing:
truth will come to light;
murder cannot be hid long;
a man's son may, but at the length truth will out.

Well done WikeLeaks & the Guardian newspaper

Great work. Just made me cry. Honestly speakink i had started hating USA,EU,Mosad. But Luv & blessings to European Journalists for This INCREDIBLE WORK.

Seriously, could you stop using such slow animations in your interactive features, it makes reading so tedious.

So this is how democracy presents itself. This is an example for replication? I cannot believe that a single Iraqi would choose this kind of 'freedom' over Saddam Hussein, and that is an indictment in itself.

The presentation of the data certainly paints a vivid and horrific picture of the reality for all those in Iraq, the civilians and the military and highlights the futility of it all, with a just solution very unlikely irrespective of the legality of the conflict and surely that was something which should have been taken into account?

That's really great Mouzone but think however that people living in Iraq may have a different view

this is devastating account of serious human rights abuses by both sides, and those who pay the cost of the pain are women and children. Imagine how many widows and orphans now struggles to survive in a country where there is no welfare system. Iraqi politicians of all origins must declare a statement to punish the perpetrators, otherwise they too are party to the atrocities.

I see a lot of mass murder perpetrated by Iraqis on other Iraqis for believing in the wrong kind of Islam. I suppose the Iraqi policemen were all fair game too?

@johnmclean1961

Not sure what all fuss is about. Nothing new here. In all wars terrible things happen, innocents are killed, soldiers behave appallingly.

On the off-chance you're not trolling and that's a serious point, "the fuss" is not because this horror is unique, "the fuss" is because its horrible.
I'd hope we make even more of a "fuss" if journalists stopped pointing out this horror and trying hard to illustrate it accurately, with power, and making it as vivid as possible.

CunnyMonster

Watch the BBC's Secret Iraq.

@Mouzone

Extraordinary. Still don't want Saddam back though.

It was never a simple choice between Saddam or this. Saddam was supported by the West as long as the West got what it wanted from him (mostly money or Saddam doing their dirty work - such as warring with Iran). They were happy to turn a blind eye to his acts of genocide, torture and other brutalities.

The war was due to the truly moronic, self-serving behaviour of Bush and Blair to bolster their own popularity and feather their political nests and the happy compliance of a number of other politicians (who were to make a small fortune from the war themselves) as well as the knee-jerk support from other politicians who were either too stupid to resist peer pressure, so poorly educated that they couldn't notice basic errors in a supporting dossier or were so uninformed because they had more important issues to deal with (such as fiddling their expenses or running their main businesses as private consultants).

Then even without a plan, the war starts with staged 'anti-Saddam' demonstrations by the US government and apparently ended with a US President flying to an aircraft carrier in the gulf.

In the meantime, it seems that 'our' troops, spies and allies were winning hearts and minds on the ground by accidentally killing parents in front of children, torturing people all over the world, imprisoning suspects for undefined terms and lengths of detention while imposing puppet governments and then democracy (in a region that has never known democracy and never asked for it).

Meanwhile, after contravening the Geneva Convention by bombing the civilian infrastructure and then rebuilding these at great cost to the Iraqi people by using their oil wealth to contract to mostly US companies, we, the West, have managed to take over all the niches Saddam had created for himself. Oh! Except it's now a democracy with martial law. I hesitate to point out that we are now Saddam because he was so much nastier wasn't he? And we are not allowed to vilify the UK and US governments because they are democracies and are so much nicer to their people with so many more freedoms and so much peace (after all, a democracy has never been to war with a democracy - well not if you believe the BS from some oft quoted historians that is).

Better choices could really have been made if only better people had been in power and greedy little bastards hadn't held so much sway within and without the government.

BSSpotter said: Then even without a plan, the war starts with staged 'anti-Saddam' demonstrations by the US government and apparently ended with a US President flying to an aircraft carrier in the gulf.

Only it was an aircraft carrier just outside of san diego, ca USA...

Where is saddam now we really need him???

War is terrible. There are no good guys only victors and losers. And the victors get to tell their story well the losers are always the bad guys. This is true of any conflict.

What bothers me is this moral justification of the victors that they did the right thing. The point is there is no right thing, the sooner we admit to that the better. Then we can at least go on and make it right.

Most of this is Iraqi's savagery meted out on each oher. Saddam kept a lid on it and knew who to treat these crimnal thugs and savages. With an iron fist. Sadly the only way to keep these maniacs in check. Really don't see what the fuss is about. Why would the Americans log any of this carnage if they were the chief perpatrators!? The waters are muddied by tribal feuds and sectarian violence. Iraq is peopled by tribes with a fairly unreconstructed morality and Al Qaeda have taken the opportunity to exploit the chaos further. Iran too has stoked up their own shia agenda. Its an unholy mess granted but what do you expect in an arab country with no history of democratic stabilty and an uneven religious demographic? Yo can hardly blame the US for most of the violence recorded in these logs. None of this is particularly new or unexpected. No idea what the fuss is about. Has anyone on Guardian even thought of pointing the finger even once on the casual brutality and tacit acceptance of daily atrocities by your average Iraqi?

@mac64 Not saying they mightn't be true, but do you have anything to back up your claims or are you just presenting your opinion as fact?

@inflivia Thank you for the information, I didn't realise that was the case.

Don't get me wrong, I'm no supporter of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, nor of occupying forces turning a blind eye to torture. But to self-flagellate and blame the west entirely for the problems in Iraq - particularly religious in-fighting - is ludicrous in my opinion.

@zavaell I agree completely - but this specific article isn't about torture, hence my comment.

Great stuff. Compelling. A real insight into the madness.

Nobody was a fan of Saddam but consider Iran before and after the fall of Saddam before you say that removing him was the best thing to do. Had we removed torture and brutality from Iraq then some might say it was the best thing to do but these logs (and educated assumptions about Iraq today) suggest that torture and brutality reigns supreme - Maybe it's better for our governments of we don't hear too much about it today but with that much corruption and resentment it must still happen even if on a smaller scale. Is the west better facing off against a stronger & empowered near nuclear Iran than a late 90's Iraq under heavy sanctions? The west will always have enemy number 1, it was Iraq, it's now Iran, if that relationship turns around it will be somebody else, N.Korea, Syria the list is endless. WE'RE IN NO BETTER POSITION only many families have had to bury their sons and daughters, arms suppliers are richer, our economies are weaker and our ability to project our military force is weakened, almost crippled in the UK. We couldn't go into Darfur to stop a genocide because we're operating at maximum military capacity so had to pretend we didn't know about it - that is a criminal act. We're worse off and with every lie and mistruth that gets stripped away we're becoming more and more aware how worse off we are. I don't even want to go into what this might mean for my niece and nephew in the next 20 years. The worst crime is the betrayal of our service personnel and their families by grey balding men in pin stripes suits that stole from us on one hand while sending them off to war limited by illogical ROE, lack of equipment and numbers that would make them very vulnerable. If you can't get people to serve this country because of mistrust then we become an easy target and that is the Blair/Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld legacy.

Whenever I see a crass "Wikileaks have blood on their hands" soundbite from someone like Hilary Clinton or the standard MOD trope about "Wikileaks endangering the lives of our troops" - I don't know whether to laugh or weep bitterly.

It's stating the obvious, but how many deaths - military or otherwise - did the Afghan war logs lead to? Even if a few people died, it would be a laughable criticism - a case of kettle calling pot black on an epic scale - but where's the evidence? Where's the beef?

According to the Red Cross, almost 10 civilians died for every soldier in all wars since 1950.

This is all horrible, and all that, but I heard that the number of people killed in Mexico due to the drug wars, or in Venezuela just for the hell of it, is higher than those killed in Iraq.

Gosh, the level of detail and perfect record keeping of the American corporatist Empire almost matches that of the Nazi fascist Empire's detailed record keeping.

Oh, that's right ---- a corporatist Empire IS a fascist Empire. That's why Benito Mussolini himself said that fascism should really be called corporatism.

Rumor has it that the chain gun camera video from the earlier Wikileaks release is going to be used in an up-coming FOX video game.

As Chris Hedges compelling notes in his books, including his newest and incomparable "Death of the Liberal Class", imperialist wars for profit are beyond the pale and can never be justified by supposedly humanitarian rational for violence ---- wars which the gutless and totally complicit 'Liberal Class' and particularly the Democratic Party have been WELL PAID by the ruling elite corporate/financial/militarist EMPIRE to justify to us even more smoothly than overt fascists like Bush could..

Alan MacDonald
Sanford, Maine

Where is Ban Ki Moon? Where is Navi Pillai? What had happened to them? They lost their tongues???

Thank you for your journalistic integrity. It is sad to need to get out of America to get real news.

To: Tony Blair:

Thank you for starting an illegal war
Thank you for being totally responsible for my involvement ( tax payer etc)
in these terrible war(s) so that I too and my family will forever have blood on our hands.
Thank you for giving my grandchildren the horrors about what may happen to their parents as they travel to and from work.

Thank you for your disarming smile

'For (you) can smile, and murder while (you) smile'

and make you and your family millionaires paid for by
of millions of deaths.

Andrew Bacevich, Washington Rules. An appreciation