He reported his findings in early 2010. The withdrawel was already decided, the last combat troops were due to leave in August. During the time of Mannings leaks the US Forces were already colaborating with local iraqi militia and the iraqi armed forces. Combat operations were already "outsorced" to local forces for the most part and the targets were mostly foreign disruptive elements, e.g "al-Qaeda".

His leaks showed operations and crimes commited in Iraq from 2007 - 2009. The worst being commited in '07 and '08 (no surprises here). Nothing in those documents was in anyway relevant to the current contuct of operations, as personal on the ground and key positions had already changed.

Moreover, he unshrouded the open secret that Iran was responsible for the worst insurgency activities against iraqi people and forgein forces during the occupation. Something those conservative idiots in the US would love to use as an excuses to start military actions against Iran. And don't get me started on what this nearly did to the US Pakistani relations.

And believe it or not. The operational goal of the US Army in Iraq wasn't the outright slaughter of iraqi civilians. Quite the contrary, in 2010 most insurgent (or terrorist) operations were directly targeted at civilians in order to incite secular strife. Becaus it is a lot easier to blow up a market then a military bases. The US Army was actually protecting iraqi civilians together with the iraqi security forces. Of course they had other strategic goals, but the main goal was to achieve a somewhat "peaceful state" that would allow an ordered withdrawel.

Military personnel does its very best to avoid civilian casualties, but stuff like this happens in a war, especially in a clusterfuck like Iraq. Soldiers make mistakes, that happens. Those kids are under a lot of pressure. Pressure you wouldn't believe. They must make decisions that decide the life or death of a person within the fraction of a second, because otherwise their comrades might die. It's not even their own life they are most concerned about, but the life of their immidiate comrades and people that depend on their security. In this war everybody looked like the enemy, because the enemy didn't wear uniforms or adhered to any rules. They used women and children as living shields, they came with gestures of piece to only open fire afterwards. They were a thread and a scourge to the iraqi population as much as to the occupation forces. In an enviroment like this innocents die. And they die daily and in far greater numbers than any of us spoiled europeans can imagine.

But there is a machinery in place that discretely and quitely compansates the victims and their families. There will be a day were all this must be brought to the eyes of the public and be review by public democratic institutions. But this has to happen after the combat operation are over, the strategic goals are met and it has to happen in due process. If that process should fail, then it's time for a Bradley Manning to come forward.

The leaks of these documents was and is incredibly important. The US was and is still occupying Iraq and Afghanistan, and finally some truth came out about both that and many other matters. It's not as important or revealing as the Pentagon Papers as they were from top clearance level and these are fairly low level documents, but it's still very important and reveals quite a few uncomfortable truths about both the US and many of its allies. Ultimately it is about democratic accountability. Why should leaders be able to lie through their teeth, even about war crimes, and never be held accountable? Okay, they're still not held accountable for their crimes, but at least some truths are out about them, which is important in itself. It's why truth commissions after civil wars is so important. Victims want to know what happened. Now they have an opportunity to know.

The incredibly harsh US persecution of Manning has essentially nothing to do with aiding the enemy, as they claim, but about deterrence. Scaring others to not dare do something like this because the punishment is so over the top gruesome if you get found out. It's a modern version of having your body filled with bullets by the Mafia.

That the leaks didn't revealed anything new, it's pretty obvious. There's still a difference : it's no longer speculations of NGO vs the official public version vs the Al Qaeda vs ..., these papers are closer to the truth (from the US Army point of view) than any other informations available to the public.

Regarding "the soldiers are doing their best to avoid civilians casualties", it's perfectly true. Who would want to kill innocents ? with the exception of the very few psycho soldiers, no one. Being under extremely hard pressure ? perfectly true too, they're even getting shot at by some of the people they're training, arming and paying, they can't trust locals.

The problem is, you're describing civilians casualties as inevitable side effect of war, "shit happens", and that's it. It's much more complex :

- blowing up a house/an entire block because it's being a nice spot for enemy mortars/snipers (on your base/outpost or the local market) is not something an officer should decide without thoroughly thinking about the consequences, and without warning the inhabitants.

- doing night raids in home, searching for weapons/bombs, using uncertain intelligence acquired from corrupted locals, and shooting on sight, without taking more precautions regarding the actual danger before launching the operation, is not wise. Not only it's adding more useless casualties to the pile, it's also turning the troops into hitmen for local criminals (through false accusations/informations).

- shooting at all taxis in retaliation, because many hit'n'run insurgents/talibans are using taxis to move around the city, is not wise, and pretty barbarian in my opinion. How is it going to solve the problem ?
As far as I know, taxi drivers prefer to have normal customer rather than driving into "hot" zone, being threatened by AKs men, risking being shot by US/UK/etc soldiers in the process.

- accepting to cover blatant abuses and crimes, even from private contractors, to avoid having your troop hesitating to shoot when it's necessary, to avoid being responsible of any soldiers' death. Officers prefer to have 100 casualties caused by "inevitables attacks" rather than 50 deaths due to their own personal decisions.
=> you end up with a stronger insurgency/talibans, civilians not really cooperating with the troops (only 1 unpunished crime is enough to affect 10 000 civilians).

The problem exposed by the Cablegate is the way the war is done, not the war itself. We all know these 2 wars in the Middle-East are a disaster, only profiting to the few who controlled the goverbment during the Bush junior era.

The question is, did the US Army managed the war correctly ? Did all the decisions took by the highest officers were justified and efficient ? What is the actual cost (in all terms, humans, strategic, economical, etc) of each of these decisions ?

If we had all the necessary data, if we could judge, if there was a control by the civilian society, then we could be sure all these civilians casualties weren't superfluous, weren't the result of wrong decisions (coming from incompetence and/or lack of consideration for civilians), but necessary and justified casualties.

As now, civilians, from the US/european citizen to the local afghan, can not trust the US Army (or any western army) to not commit crimes or use unnecessary violence/firepower, and if such things happen, to provide true justice. They can not trust these armies to actually care about the civilians through their decisions.