WikiLeaks: A New Pentagon Papers?

The lead article in today’s New York Times, “The Iraq Archive: The Strands of a War,” shows how the military tends to exaggerate in war time or excessively avoid it. The summary provides specific examples and an overall picture of the Iraq war at variance with accounts and portrayals by the Pentagon.

One thinks back to the release of the Pentagon Papers by Daniel Ellsberg and its description of the Vietnam War and similarities between the two.

As an autocratic organization, the U.S. military likes to portray a positive picture of events during war time, and while this is commendable in some respects, it is not when it affects decision making by both the President, and the ultimate arbitrer of war efforts, the American people.

Some of the revelations of WikiLeaks are more a matter of degree than any earthshaking revelations, but they are important nonetheless. They include a greater death toll by Iraqi civilians, prison abuse by the Iraqi government that puts Abu Ghraib to shame, direct involvement by Iranians in support of their fellow Shiites — sometimes leading to conflict with American troops, and the movement of independent contractors to the forefront of the war effect, to the point of exceeding the number of American troops themselves.

For those who decry the release of sensitive documents by WikiLeaks, one wondes if the reason is more embarassment to the military instead of actual peril on the battlefield. The redacting seems to have been pursued in a thorough manner, both by The New York Times and the web site itself.