This afternoon, Wikileaks did their long awaited document dump of nearly 400,000 classified US military documents related to Iraq. There may be a few revelations, but I think it is most likely to provide an opportunity for many on the anti-war left to get their malevolent stupid on and try to drag others down to their level of idiocy. If the early posts are a guide, be bullish on stupid for the next week.
Let's start with this allegation from The Guardian:
US authorities failed to investigate hundreds of reports of abuse, torture, rape and even murder by Iraqi police and soldiers whose conduct appears to be systematic and normally unpunished.
You are going to hear a lot about something called FRAGO 242 and the related FRAGO 039. FRAGO stands for Fragmentary Order and it is defined here as:
Use to send timely changes of existing orders to subordinate and supporting commanders while providing notification to higher and adjacent commands.
I have not been able to find a full copy of either order, but Aljazeera has the following:
(FRAGO) 242 "Provided the initial report confirms US forces were not involved in the detainee abuse, no further investigation will be conducted unless directed by HHQ."
(FRAGO) 039 "Now requires reports of Iraqi on Iraqi abuse be reported through operational channels"
I would like to see the full text of each order. A search of the Wikileaks database yields no results, which makes me wonder if they are deliberately withholding the documents because they explain why the orders were issued. And why would that be?
Well, FRAGO 242 was reportedly issued in June of 2004. Hmmm, now what would have happened in June 2004? Oh yeah, the United Nations returned sovereignty over Iraq to the Interim Government of Iraq. In a letter to the United Nations at that time, Interim Government Prime Minister Allawi noted the following among other things:
In addition, the MNF and Iraqi government leaders...will refer issues up the respective chains of command where necessary.
The Iraqi Army and Iraqi Police reported to the civilian Government of Iraq after June 2004. MNF-Iraq had no more authority to conduct investigations on Iraqi police or army personnel than they did the NYPD. MNF-Iraq troops could and did intervene and file reports up the chain of command when they learned about abuses, but they had no legal authority to go further.
It is not as though nothing ever happened up the chain of command either. I haven't looked them up, but I remember MNF-Iraq senior officers briefing members of the press about the constant efforts to professionalize the Iraqi Security Forces and the pressure they put on their Iraqi counterparts to end abuses. I'm not going to sugarcoat those very real abuses or excuse them away, but it was not an easy task to get Iraqi officials to make progress on that front while barbarians were threatening the very existence of the Iraqi government and slaughtering their own people by the thousands.
You are going to see a lot of this over the next few weeks:
In June 2004, DOD Issued Instructions to Ignore Iraqi-on-Iraqi Torture
That is absolutely false, and also what I suspect is a deliberate lie.
The falsehoods and lies are just beginning. They are going to turn into an avalanche over the weekend, but I would just urge people to read carefully and watch for distortions, circular links that purport to add credibility to assertions but really don't, and general hysteria.
You know, the anti-war left from 2001-2008. They're baaaack.
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