WikiLeaks Iraq Reports Reveal Death Toll of the War

A news ticker headline about the release of almost 400,000 secret U.S. documents about the war in Iraq on the WikiLeaks website Oct. 22, 2010 is seen in New York's Times Square. Stan Honda/AFP/Getty Images

Stan Honda/AFP/Getty Images

WikiLeaks released a collection of 391,832 classified reports from the Iraq War, dating from January, 2004 to December, 2009. The whistle-blowing website was overloaded, with the document search section inaccessible not long following the release on Oct. 22.

The documents, dubbed “The Iraq War Logs,” consist primarily of short field reports, many of which are only about a paragraph in length. The leak follows WikiLeaks’ July, 2010, release of the Afghan War Diary, consisting of 76,908 field reports.

Among the information revealed by the Iraq War reports are the numbers of killed and wounded in the war, abuse of detainees in Iraqi prisons, the role of Iran in training Iraqi militants, and the links between Syrian intelligence agents to al-Qaeda.

Information compiled by The Bureau of Investigative Journalism regarding the deaths of 109,032 people outlined in the reports, reveals that the overwhelming majority of civilian deaths were caused by murders and improvised explosive device (IED) explosions. The leading cause of U.S. troop deaths was IEDs.

The documents show 15,000 deaths that were previously unreported, according to analysis from independent NGO, Iraq Body Count.

An estimated 32,563 Iraqi civilians were killed in “sectarian murders,” while 20,228 were killed by IEDs, according to The Bureau of Investigative Journalism. A total of 4,766 civilians were killed by direct fire, with the combined total of the remaining categories adding up to roughly the same amount.

The New York Times noted that “The reports make it clear that most civilians, by far, were killed by other Iraqis.”

A Department of Defense (DOD) task force was established to comb through the reports prior to their release to assess whether they pose a threat to the U.S. military, allies, or operations, according to the American Forces Press Service (AFPS).

Pentagon Press Secretary Geoff Morrell condemned the “unauthorized disclosure” of the classified documents and said that the “significant activities” reports are only “initial, raw observations by tactical units,” AFPS reported.

The documents “are essentially snapshots of events, both tragic and mundane, and do not tell the whole story,” Morrell said.

Pentagon spokesman Marine Corps Col. Dave Lapan stated that “The information remains classified even if it is released publicly,” and that DOD personnel accessing the reports on government computers will be regarded as a security breach, AFPS reported.

“We deplore WikiLeaks for inducing individuals to break the law, leak classified documents, and then cavalierly share that secret information with the world, including our enemies,” Lapan said. “We know terrorist organizations have been mining the leaked Afghan documents for information to use against us, and this Iraq leak is more than four times as large.”

Much like WikiLeaks’ Afghan War Diary, many of the more scathing Iraq War reports tell information that was already known, including some of the more violent incidents such as the 2005 stampede that killed more than 950 people in Baghdad following rumors of a suicide bomber. The incident was covered by major media including the New York Times.

The reports also shine light on some of the known, yet less reported, atrocities at the hands of al-Qaeda, including their use of individuals with Down Syndrome as suicide bombers. A similar case was outlined in the book Revolt Against Al-Qa’ida by senior counter-radicalization government consultant Howard Gambrill Clark.