The Wikileaks website, which had published 72 000 US Army documents relating to Afghanistan, has just put out 391 832 war logs reporting on incidents involving the US Army in Iraq, dating from January 2004 to December 2009

The documents were sent ten weeks ahead of publication to four Atlanticist outlets, The New York Times, the Guardian, Le Monde and Der Spiegel, to be analyzed.

The mainstream media have chiefly reacted with astonishment at the scope and diversity of the violence chronicled in the documents, drawing a certain number of conclusions about the role of the mercenaries or the weakness of the Iraqi Government.

Thanks to this spectacular operation, major media outlets have finally filled their self-induced information gap. The released documents refer to events which were widely echoed by the Iraqi press and the Resistance in recent years, but which the dominant media willfully ignored or concealed to their readers.

Bewildered by such silence, Réseau Voltaire decided to feature - by way of example and for a limited period - a selection of the most important stories, that were published under a separate column: Janvier en Irak (January in Iraq). This five-year old experience shows that the information was already out there for those who were interested in seeking it out.

It follows that the related analyses made by Voltaire Network for the past 5 years have been validated, while those of the mainstream media have been self-discredited. To be noted is the fact that The New York Times, the Guardian, Le Monde and Der Spiegel have boasted about their updating as being a journalistic feat, a momentous scoop, instead of apologizing to their readers for having lied to them for so long.

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– « Robert Gates: the WikiLeaks leaks are inconsequential », Voltaire Network, 19 October 2010.
– « Voltaire Network Communiqué - Wikileaks: a political diversion », Voltaire Network, 28 July 2010.
– « Something Stinks About Wikileaks Release of "Secret" Documents », by F. William Engdahl, Voltaire Network, 20 August 2010.