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The long-awaited wave of classified U.S. military documents from WikiLeaks crashed ashore Friday afternoon, detailing battlefield tales of Iraqi brutality, higher-than-acknowledged Iraqi civilian deaths, and Iranian perfidy -- but no jaw-dropping revelations.

-- The documents detail repeated killings and torture by America's Iraqi allies of fellow Iraqis. The U.S. failed to investigate hundreds of cases of abuse, rape, torture and murder by Iraqis working alongside U.S. troops. Prisoners were hung by their wrists or ankles and whipped, punched, kicked and subject to electric shocks. Six reports detail abused Iraqi prisoners apparently dying in Iraqi custody.

-- A pair of Iraqi militants making motions as if to surrender were shot and killed in 2007 because, according to a U.S. military lawyer, "they cannot surrender to aircraft, and are still valid targets." They were among the 109,000 deaths enumerated in the logs, including 66,081 non-combatant deaths and 15,000 who perished in previously unknown incidents.

-- "Iran is gaining control of Iraq at many levels of the Iraqi government," a 2005 U.S. military report warned. The data detail numerous cases where Iranian-backed militants took anti-U.S. actions during the war and how Tehran allegedly supplied them with rockets, car bombs, IEDs, and portable anti-aircraft missiles, one of which downed a U.S. helicopter in 2007.

While the WikiLeaks website remains down Friday for "scheduled maintenance," the mysterious cyber outfit had given nearly 400,000 daily reports compiled by U.S. military units to four news organizations under an embargo. The New York Times and British Guardian were the two English outlets; the French newspaper Le Monde and the German magazine Der Spiegel are the other two.


The Pentagon was not pleased. "We know our enemies will mine this information, looking for insights into how we operate, cultivate sources and react in combat situations, even the capability of our equipment," spokesman Geoff Morrell said in a statement. "This security breach could very well get our troops and those they are fighting with killed."

A Defense Department team of some 120 experts, led by Army Brig. General Robert Carr, an intelligence veteran, is already poring over the documents to determine how serious a blow they could inflict on U.S. national security. Most importantly, U.S. officials are primed to move to counter any revelations, and to prevent any harm from coming to "sources and methods" pinpointed as key suppliers of intelligence to the U.S. in Iraq.

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