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Page 1 of the US Consolidated Rules of Engagement for Iraq. See the file link below for the rest

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Release date February 4, 2008



Summary

Classified SECRET consolidated US Forces Rules of Engagement (ROE) for Iraq.

On first reading, the document contains a number of items of interest to the press, including rules about mosque attacks, detention of immams, cross border incursions (including Iran and Syria), the use of mines and riot control agents, terrorist targeting, the destruction of Iraqi government property used by insurgents and even kafkaesque rules for attacks on WMD mobile production labs.

Deeper reading by those more familiar with the US-Iraq war is likely to reveal other items of interest, for instance variations in the declaration that Al Quds, the Mahdi Army and armed supporters of Muqtada Al-Sadr are enemies who may be engaged at will.

The document forms a talking point to most US operations in Iraq and the degree of official sanction for them.

For example the Jan 10 2008 New York Times article on Blackwater CS gas [tear gas] use:

may be compared with this earlier Wikileaks investigtaion:

and Chemical Weapons Convention related rules (Riot Control Agents - RTAs) specified in the Rules of Engagement.

The ROE classification date is 2005-10-03. However ROEs change slowly over time and the current ROE is likely quite similar to the document described here.

The document comes from the same courageous national security whistleblower "Peryton" who disclosed Guantanamo bay's main manuals and a classified report on Fallujah, all of which were independently verified and released by Wikileaks in December 2007 (U.S lost Fallujah's info war) and associated links)

A few words on classification and distribution:

"(U)" means unclassified "(C)" means classified CONFIDENTIAL "(S)" means classified SECRET "REL" means "release" "IRQ" means "IRAQ" "MCFI" means Multi Coalition Force Iraq

"DISPLAY ONLY TO IRQ" likely means that cleared (to a level of SECRET) Iraqi personnel can only view the document and not retain it.

FRAGO means "Fragmentary Order", "OPORD" means "operating order".

On legitimacy:

The ROE comes from 'Peryton' a national security whistleblower who has supplied a number of other classified or For Official Use Only documents, two of which have been publicly verified by the US military:

and one of which attracted a "no comment", but was subsequently privately verified by UPI's national security correspondent Shaun Waterman:

Wikileaks has privately verified the ROE and several other documents from this source with our contacts and no document Wikileaks has released from this source has ever been questioned. The material is also in harmony with the public record. We stand by the document.

On motivation, Peryton has shown that they are primarily motivated by ethical concerns and the press has always found something important in their material, e.g:

Declassification dates are almost always on 10 or 25 year boundaries. SECRET//.../20151003" (year-month-day) is a standard marking which specifies the declassification date. Simply subtract 10 years to obtain the classification date (2005-10-03).

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Further information

108458

PDF document, version 1.4

SHA256 92d07937d9570c17af98003eae3541aabdedc6013c1a81552160afa5daa55899



