It’s the unvarnished portrait of war pushed in front of our eyes thanks to the publication by the New York Times, Der Spiegel, The Guardian, and the WikiLeaks website of approximately 92,000 pages of sensitive U.S. intelligence documents. The dramatically named “War Logs” no doubt posing questions about the direction and strategy of the Afghan war, our tense yet active relationship with Pakistan, our overall security, and the U.S. Military‘s attitude toward collateral damage and perhaps even war crimes. Similarly this release will force us to probe the competency and truthfulness of both the Obama and Bush administration, and the actions and motives of the documents publishers who seemingly abandoned the questions of should for the embrace of can.

But through all that confusion, all those questions outwardly posed shouldn’t we ask ourselves why this feels like such a revelation? Shouldn’t we have been suspicious of Pakistan, a potential rogue nuclear power, an aggressor that makes no secret of their alliances? Shouldn’t we be weary of Government proclamations of progress and success in an almost decade long war that has delivered on none of its promises? How can we not know, down deep in our guts that war is blood, messy and raw with no break, no pause? Not a video game, not a slick movie. War is simply a necessary yet faulty construct guaranteed to spring blood from innocent wells. That reality should spare no ones false utopia, piercing the historical and heroic descriptions of war that leave out the mountains of subtext, the gray that gives us a more full idea of wars true cost.

These whispers have been heard before, in Vietnam, in the Persian Gulf during Desert Storm. Former Attorney General Ramsey Clark even went so far as to accuse the first Bush administration of war crimes, presenting a report to the International War Crimes Tribunal. Included below is an excerpt from that report and a gruesome image that accompanied it.

“The “Highway of Death,” a name the press has given to the    road from Mutlaa, Kuwait, to Basra, Iraq. U.S. planes immobilized the convoy by disabling vehicles at its front and rear, then bombing and strafing the resulting traffic jam for hours. More than 2,000 vehicles and tens of thousands of charred and dismembered bodies littered the sixty miles of highway. The clear rapid incineration of the human being [pictured above] suggests the use of napalm, phosphorus, or other incendiary bombs. These are anti-personnel weapons outlawed under the 1977 Geneva Protocols. This massive attack occurred after Saddam Hussein announced a complete troop withdrawal from Kuwait in compliance with UN Resolution 660. Such a massacre of withdrawing Iraqi soldiers violates the Geneva Convention of 1949, common article 3, which outlaws the killing of soldiers who “are out of combat.” There are, in addition, strong indications that many of those killed were Palestinian and Kuwaiti civilians trying to escape the impending siege of Kuwait City and the return of Kuwaiti armed forces. No attempt was made by U.S. military command to distinguish between military personnel and civilians on the “highway of death.” The whole intent of international law with regard to war is to prevent just this sort of indiscriminate and excessive use of force. -Ramsey Clark

Now while some have for nearly two decades sought to invalidate Mr. Clark’s report painting it as the rants and raves of an extreme leftist anti-war activist and his gang of like-minded pacifists the fact remains that the “Highway of Death” did not exist solely in the pages of Ramsey Clark’s report. This clip by Canada’s CBC network clearly demonstrates that, displaying the aftermath of the attack with torched civilian vehicles surrounding the myriad of children’s toys spilled onto the street among the military transports for looters to pick through. And of course the “Highway of Death” incident is not the sole indiscretion by the U.S Military in the Gulf conflict or any other conflict past or present.

Our military failings are numerous, documented, known by some but ignored by many. The reaction to this leak proves as much. That we persist, that we continue to wage war despite such sins is a mark against a world that has shown no capacity for peace, no head for tolerance, freedom, or a steady calm sea of existence. Our failings do not render war obsolete, and they should not make us less willing to fight, to sacrifice in the name of justice, in the name of peace. No, those failings simply demand that we continue to try to step gently into the theater of war, mindful of the innocence that dances all around a combat zone. They demand an unyielding effort to protect and respect that innocence for the sake of morality, and for the sake of the ideals we are fighting for, they ask for repentance when we fail, and they beg that we prosper and that we are somehow better than we have been. Maybe this leak helps advance that directive, maybe the rewards out measure the risks. More questions whose answers will unravel over time. But on this day, hours after the release of the “War Logs” one thing is a crystalline truth, a war that always felt real to so many just became shockingly true to all of us.

Jason Tabrys is the Editor and Chief Contributor for Painespeak.com. A national columnist for Examiner.com Jason can be followed on twitter by clicking @JasonTabrys