So the Australian government is not interested in investigating any potential war crimes in Iraq but the messenger who brought the news. Don’t be surprised:
Defence Minister Stephen Smith says the release of almost 400,000 US documents about the Iraq War could create a security risk for Australia.
The whistleblowing website WikiLeaks has published classified material that suggests US commanders ignored torture conducted by Iraqi security forces.
Defence set up a taskforce to go through classified documents about the Afghanistan war released by the website earlier this year, and Mr Smith says the same taskforce will go through the latest documents.
“It’s an early history and we have no troops or forces or personnel militarily in Iraq, and so therefore the danger in that respect is less,” he said.
“It still does potentially give people an insight into the way into which we do operations and it does potentially put people at risk who have assisted us in the past.
“We’ll go through that painstaking course and treat it in exactly the same way we’ve treated the earlier unauthorised disclosure of classified military information.”
Mr Smith says the taskforce has found the release of classified material about the Afghanistan war has not put Australian troops at risk.
“The great danger of releasing such unauthorised information is that it does prejudice the security of our operations, it enables to have an insight into them, but the substance of that report is that no damage has been done,” he said.
Governments across the world are fuming over the latest WikiLeaks release.