A source provides details to the American government about the nefarious activities of a Middle Eastern country. That information ends up in scores of secret U.S. government documents. Subsequently, the information winds up on the front pages of major newspapers, and is heralded by war hawks in Washington as a casus belli.

Sound familiar? It should, but perhaps not in the way you're thinking. Here's a hint: It's not 2003, but 2010. This is the story of what happened recently to Iran in the wake of the latest WikiLeaks document release…

These reports are accounts—and often single-source accounts—by U.S. military officials, based largely on unnamed sources whose motivations cannot even be guessed at, let alone their version of events confirmed.