DUCKPOND

A TORRENT OF EVIDENCE October 26, 2010

The documents released by Wikileaks have apparently revealed a torrent of evidence of killing and torture in which American mercenaries and military were involved, if not complicit.

The involvement of the other members of the coalition of the killing, as I understand it, is not so clear. While other news organizations in the US may not have dealt with the revelations as significant news, this was not true of Democracy Now.

Glenn Greenwald compares to the coverage in The New York Times to other media outlets that were given early access to the documents. The documents suggest that the US Military ignored torture and abuse committed by Iraqis they trained, and handed over detainees for torture. He writes:

The difference in how (a) the NYT “reported on” — i.e., whitewashed — these horrific, incriminating revelations about the U.S. and (b) the rest of the world media reported on it, could not be more vast. Again, even Politico understood its significance, as this was the first line of its article: “Newly released Iraq war documents paint a devastating portrait of apparent U.S. indifference to a pattern of murder and torture by the Iraqi army, raising new questions about the Obama administration’s plans to transfer the nation’s security operations to Iraqi units.” But the NYT in its headline chose to venerate the superiority of American detainee treatment, while barely mentioning one of the most critical revelations from this leak.

Similarly, newspapers around the world heavily covered the fact that the U.N. chief investigator for torture called on the Obama administration to formally investigate this complicity in Iraqi abuse, pointing out that “if leaked US files on the Iraq conflict point to clear violations of the UN convention against torture, Barack Obama’s administration has a clear obligation to investigate them,” and that “under the conventions on human rights there is an obligation for states to criminalise every form of torture, whether directly or indirectly, and to investigate any allegations of abuse.” Today, Britain’s Deputy Prime Minister called on the British Government to fulfill that obligation by formally investigating the role British troops might have played in “the allegations of killings, torture and abuse in Iraq.”

But these calls for investigations — and the U.N.’s explanation of the legal obligation to do so — are virtually nonexistent in the American media. The only mention in the NYT of the U.N.’s statement is buried deep down in a laundry list of short items on one of its blogs. Along with most American media outlets, The Washington Post has no mention of this matter at all (while whitewashing American guilt, the NYT — in the form of Judy Miller’s former partner, Michael Gordon — prominently trumpeted from the start of its coverage the “interference” in Iraq by Iran in aiding “Iraqi militias,” a drum Gordon has been dutifully beating for years).

The notion that the Obama administration not only should — but must — investigate the role its military played in enabling this widespread, stomach-turning torture and abuse in Iraq is simply suppressed in American political discourse, most of all by the newspaper which played the leading role in enabling the attack on that country in the first place. It’s not hard to see why. The last thing American political and media elites in general want is a discussion of the legal obligations to investigate torture and bring the torturers to legal account, and the last thing which enablers of the Iraq War specifically want is a focus on how we not only allowed but participated in the very human rights abuses which we claimed (and still claim) our invasion would stop.

One would imagine that now the evidence is shows the evidence of widespread wrongdoing that investigations and trials will follow, if not soon, given the reluctance of the American Government to pursue the matters.

ELSEWHERE:

Iraq Veterans Against the War have released an statement on the Wikileaks’ documents and called for accountability.