The U.S. military said on Monday it did not under-report the number of civilian deaths in the Iraq war or ignore prisoner abuse by Iraqi forces, rejecting allegations arising from leaked U.S. documents.
The whistle-blower website WikiLeaks on Friday released nearly 400,000 classified U.S. files on the Iraq war, the biggest leak of its kind in U.S. military history.
WikiLeaks said the documents detailed the deaths of 15,000 more Iraqi civilians than the U.S. military had reported.
Army Chief of Staff General George Casey, who served as the top U.S. military commander in Iraq from 2004-2007, said U.S. forces actually went into morgues to count bodies.
"I don't recall downplaying civilian casualties," Casey told reporters.
