Whistleblower website defends Iraq War document leak

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange says American politicians and the military must be held accountable for alleged war crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The founder of the whistleblowing website WikiLeaks has defended orchestrating the biggest leak of classified reports in America's military history.
The "War Logs" suggest US soldiers knew of torture being conducted by Iraqi security forces, and detail 15,000 previously unreported civilian casualties.
The documents also detail Iran's role in arming and training Iraqi militias.
Iraq's prime minister, Nouri al-Maliki, has dismissed the leak as politically motivated "media games and bubbles", deliberately timed to undermine him.
The Pentagon says the leak will endanger the lives of servicemen and women, and Iraqi civilians and troops.
But Wikileaks founder Julian Assange says similar Pentagon claims made after he leaked Afghan War reports earlier this year proved unfounded.
Mr Assange says America's military and political might needs to be brought to account.
Britain and Australia have criticised the leak, with Australian Defence Minister Stephen Smith saying it could could create a security risk for Australia.
Australia's Defence Department set up a taskforce to go through classified documents about the Afghanistan war released by the website earlier this year.
Mr Smith says no risks to Australian troops were found in the earlier leak, but says the same taskforce will go through the lastest documents.
"The great danger of releasing such unauthorised information is that it does prejudice the security of our operations," 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."
WikiLeaks is set to publish more secret papers in coming weeks. Rachael Brown, ABC news, London. (From ABC News)