Wikileaks releases 400,000 secret documents on Iraq's occupation

As you probably know already, Wikileaks has made the second release of the US military secret documents, this time with some 400,000 items, which were pre-released to several Western newspapers, as happened with the Afghanistan ones.

Maybe the best review is not in the media but in the blog of Layla Anwar, from where I take the final half of her article:

Do you remember at any time of your life when you were a witness to something horrendous, and when you reported it, no one believed you. Even those closest to you, or whom you thought were closest to you, did not believe you. You kept repeating what you saw, and no one believed you.

Yet you still held on to that truth you witnessed. Others ridiculed you, called you names, silenced you, threatened to kill you, called you a liar, accused you of imagining things, accused you of having your own agenda...and with the ridicule, came the minimization, the twisting, the guilt provoking like in - come on it was not that bad or it was not like that, you are nothing but a little hateful liar making trouble...and sometimes the pressure would be so great, you'd start wondering that maybe after all you did conjure up things...that maybe you did not see right, that maybe it was an illusion of your mind...in short --when you came with the truth, they did everything to make you doubt yourself and doubt the truth. Sometimes you'd fall into some autistic silence and sometimes you'd overcompensate with more defiance...but still you felt terribly all alone.

But you held on...you gripped to that thing....and still terribly alone, you realized in that process, in that process of being stubborn and obstinate in not letting go, in holding on - the extent of the cover up. The COVER-UP.

And through digging through the cover-up, you realize something even more important; the networks, the alliances, the other wars that are going on underneath this cover up. Then you understand - the thicker the cover up, the thicker the lie, the thicker the minimization, the thicker the omissions, the more grave and dangerous the Truth is. The Truth of what happened and... is happening.

And at some point comes a "parental" figure, an authority, a benevolent one, a big brother and says - I got some story to tell - and then in some cryptic form, repeats your truth, reveals it... You still have to read between the lines, but you say to yourself -- finally am not alone anymore. Finally, what I saw was not my imagination, it was/is the Truth.

So you breath a little relief and feel that maybe your nightmare is about to end and that you could sleep with a little Peace.

This is what happened yesterday to Iraqis who felt so alone with their Truth - they sighed a little relief and hoped to sleep with a little peace, hoping like I did, that maybe, just maybe they will be woken up from their solitary nightmare...

So it's mostly about confirming what we all really knew already. All of us who dared to look at the truth and who held no illusions about benevolent intentions spread by the propaganda machinery. It's just making official what we all knew:

Because we all knew that the USA and allies promoted torture.

Because we all knew that the USA and allies murdered civilians without any contempt.

Samar Hassam cries as her parents were murdered by US troops

Because we all knew that mercenary troops (military contractors) run wild.

Because we all know that US troops will kill you without any contempt, as happened to so many journalists.

Because we all knew all that, detail up or down. And if you did not know it was because you did not want to know, period.

What we do not know yet, is what is the USA doing in Iraq, what law, right or democratic principle supports their presence. We only know that three of the most diabolic politicians of all times, Bush, Blair and Aznar, gathered in Açores islands and decided to attack the Mesopotamian country, oddly enough strengthening Iran in the process.

The answer to why won't be in the Wikileaks files, unless they have something even hotter, such as Cheney-Rumsfeld-Pentagon secret conversations, what I really doubt.

For more or less extensive coverage of this leak, see for instance The Guardian.