Duncan Gillies: Ignore leaks Pentagon has got to be kidding

Opinion

If you are reading this, I may be on the run, locked up in some secret CIA prison, or be on a spaceship, having been abducted by aliens.

Because by writing this, I am going against the Pentagon's wishes.

I haven't had any run-ins with the United States Department of Defence before so I don't know how seriously I should take the threat.

But this week, after whistleblower website WikiLeaks announced it was going to release 400,000 intelligence files related to the Iraq war, the Pentagon asked the media to ignore the story.

Now usually, if someone released 400,000 intelligence files on any subject, I'd wait for some other unfortunate journalist to pore over all those papers and then I'd read his 400-word report on the main points. Then, if it was worth it, I might read someone else's 800-word report.

But if there's one thing that battle-hardened, danger-loving, adrenalin-junky journalists love more than taking on the military might and intelligence chiefs of a world super power, it's taking on the military might and intelligence chiefs of a world super power that have just told them to ignore the story.

So it's been a big news week. Journalists have been acting like packs of rabid dogs, frothing at the mouth as they used their teeth to tear open envelopes full of secret documents, and hammering away at their keyboards like madmen in a bid to be the first to get the big story out to the public.

Then again, sports reporters always act like that and this was the week when Sonny Bill Williams made the All Blacks.

Those looking into the WikiLeaks story, meanwhile, were acting more like bloodhounds. They had picked up the scent and nothing the Pentagon could do was going to lead them off the trail.

That didn't include me, however. I just had nothing else to write about. Couldn't really talk about SBW in the world section.

The WikiLeaks release, which comes after the website released more than 70,000 intelligence files on the Afghanistan war in July, is interesting, though, for many reasons.

But one of the big questions it raises for me - and this may be because as of yet I haven't been involved in planning the invasion of any countries - is how do you create so many reports on just one war?

Come on people, forget the "War On Terror". What about the "War On Paperwork"? Has the US military introduced the Army equivalent of National Standards so every soldier has to be assessed in all areas of performance or something?

I bet the Pentagon didn't even realise there were so many reports on the war. No wonder it hates WikiLeaks so much. It hates WikiLeaks the way Superman hates kryptonite. WikiLeaks knows the Pentagon's secrets. It is its nemesis. WikiLeaks' Australian founder Julian Assange even looks like Lex Luthor.

Still, I was surprised the Pentagon would tell the media to ignore the story. What could be in those documents that would be so damaging? That George W. Bush's advisers were already itching to invade Iraq before 9/11?

That Saddam Hussein didn't have a working relationship with Osama bin Laden and didn't even have any weapons of mass destruction? That Iraqis were humiliated and tortured in hellish prisons by US troops who took pictures of the abuse as though they were taking holiday snapshots?

That tens of thousands of civilians have died as a result of the US-led invasion? That millions of dollars meant for reconstruction can't be accounted for? That the US was hopelessly prepared to deal with the situation it created?

No, there must be something much bigger. And according to my extensive research, which consists of having watched dozens of made-for-television sci-fi mini-series, the American Government only acts in this manner when aliens have landed.

It usually happens in mainland America and the aliens usually assimilate into society quickly, having chosen white bodies and non-Muslim sounding names.

But why not Iraq? It might explain the treatment of prisoners at Abu Ghraib. It might explain the collapse of the case against Blackwater guards who killed 17 Iraqis in a 2007 shooting. It may even explain what happened to the WMDs and why it took so long to find Saddam.

But if I am right and it was aliens who dumped Saddam in the hole where US troops found him, and I've just exposed this cover up, who's to say I won't be next?

Now that would be a story the people at WikiLeaks would want to get their hands on.

* Duncan Gillies is the Herald's Foreign Subeditor