The Context of the Abu Ghraib Prison Scandal

In terms of the public view of the Iraq War in the summer of 2003, everything was going great. In May, President George Bush delivered his famous "Mission Accomplished" speech, which boasted that "Major combat operations in Iraq have ended. In the battle of Iraq, the United States and our allies have prevailed," (Ricks 145). This was not the case. No plans had been made for the post-war occupation of Iraq, no weapons of mass destruction had yet been discovered, and there was still much work to do in terms of rebuilding the country. 

President Bush on the USS Abraham Lincoln

Although the White House only acknowledged isolated insurgent attacks in sporadic regions, the insurgency was starting to push full steam ahead. Enemy fighters used roadside car bombs to kill American convoys passing by, and pushed the US military to adapt new techniques to resist and survive the attacks. Due to little intelligence, and military leaders uninformed of an overarching plan, chaos ran rampant the military operations. Meanwhile, American soldiers stationed in Iraq starting losing their momentum and optimistic attitudes towards the war. They were not properly trained to detain and interrogate Iraqi insurgency members, and had no real background on how to depict enemies from civilians. This led to the mass roundup of thousands of Iraqi civilians, and transfer to Abu Ghraib, a small prison outside of Baghdad. 

Abu Ghraib Prison

Political leaders called for interrogation to force intelligence out of prisoners, which would hopefully lead to less bombs, attacks and eventual deaths for the US military. General Sanchez approved harsh interrogation techniques, even harsher than the ones in current operation at Guantanamo Bay, to force intelligence out of the prisoners. "All of the Army's problems in Iraq in 2003-poor planning, clumsy leadership, strategic confusion, counterproductive tactics, undermanning, being overly reactive-came together in the treatment of prisoners," (Ricks 290). In an international scandal that would come to be known as simply "Abu Ghraib," American soldiers and military leaders would be harshly criticized and  punished for the torturous attacks that happened to the human detained at this prison. 

PFC Lynndie England abusing prisoners