Wikileaks Reveal Rumsfeld, Pentagon Lies [Dispatches from the Culture Wars]

Wikileaks Reveal Rumsfeld, Pentagon Lies [Dispatches from the Culture Wars]: "

Yeah, I know. It's hardly a shock that the Pentagon lies to the American people. You can be pretty sure they're lying a large majority of the time. But it's almost amusing the degree to which Donald Rumsfeld and military leaders in Iraq turned into Baghdad Bob after the invasion. Ellen Knickmeyer, the Baghdad bureau chief after the invasion, documents all of this with the help of the latest Wikileaks document dump. First she sets the scene:

In the dark morning hours of Feb. 22, 2006, a group of unknown attackers detonated bombs in the northern Iraqi city of Samarra, bringing down the golden dome of a revered Shia Muslim shrine.

A few hours later, I drove through Baghdad and watched the country descend into civil war. Then the Baghdad bureau chief for The Washington Post, I drove with Iraqi and American colleagues to Sadr City, the sprawling slum on the outskirts of the city. We watched hundreds of black-clad religious militiamen, waving their AK 47s in the air and calling for revenge, in what would be the start to a campaign of sectarian killing and torture.

Read the rest of this post... | Read the comments on this post...

Also check out the featured ScienceBlog of the week: Inside the Outbreaks on the ScienceBlogs Book Club

"