Some notes on Wikileaks documents

First thing, a war is a war. It’s not a very loving and caring thing to do, specially when the other “team” is using children, women or elderly people, as spies or as suicide bombers. Or even persons whose intelligence level is disputable or who have psychiatric problems. In every war, since the beginning of mankind there have been episodes which any sane person would find disgusting if he had been told about them.

That said, and considering the insistence on Human Rights abuses on the Iraqi war (someone caring to see how many times Saudi Human Rights abuses in peaceful time are on newspapers and magazines’ main pages? Oh, no, please, these guys have oil!!), there are other things I would like to point out:

1. Firstly, the immediate consequences for Iraqi PM could be devastating. “There has been no evidence found in the documents that Mr. Maliki was aware of the grisly acts of torture and beatings. However, the timing of the documents’ release comes just as his Shiite bloc, known as State of Law, has made gains in securing the majority of parliamentary seats needed to form a new government“. Now, his opponents, Mr. Allawi and Haider Mulla, both want an investigation on the leaked documents, specially about some illegal detentions. Well, accountability is natural in any democracy, although let’s hope Islamist terrorists don’t profit from this information. As they are brutal by nature, they don’t care about publicity or accusations. Something which obviously make themselves a little different from “peaceful” politicians.
2. Secondly, the Iraqi WMD: there is an article in Wired (found) that speaks about how Wikileaks warlogs prove their existence: “WikiLeaks’ newly-released Iraq war documents reveal, U.S. troops continued to find chemical weapons labs, encounter insurgent specialists in toxins, and uncover weapons of mass destruction“. Of course, we have to wonder why these warlogs weren’t published to show their existence, something which would have ended a lot of speculations and ferocious critics on the subject.
3. And thirdly, the participation of Iran and Syria in the Iraqi war, supporting the so-called “insurgence“, is clear considering the content of the documents. Most of the people are speaking about Iran, that “provided paramilitary training to Shiite Muslim insurgents“, something not specially striking if we consider the good relationship between Al-Sadr, the Iraqi cleric in “charge” of the Mahdi militia, and Iranian Govt, among other data. But there were smuggling operations from Iraq to Syria documented in those documents, with Syrian guards’ support. But not only smuggled things were passing through the Syrian-Iraqi borders: “The WikiLeaks documents describe hundreds of “foreign fighters”, including dozens of Syrian citizens, using the country’s remote eastern desert as a transit point into Iraq. In June 2005, Iraqi border police engaged a group of men who crossed the border illegally to recover a disabled vehicle – which was “believed to be used in smuggling [operations].” The police came under fire – not from the men recovering the vehicle, but from Syrian border guards“.

I mention that “smuggling operations” because there were satellite photos that allegedly proved that Iraqi WMD had been smuggled to Syria. Will Wikileaks’ released documents provide more evidence about that claim?