The Context of the Abu Ghraib Prison Abuse Scandal

In the summer of 2003, Iraq could be seen as a place of great destruction. Though the U.S. Army was present, there was no plan set in motion on how to deal with everything going on, and with little to no intelligence coming in; it was like they were a lame duck, just waiting. In order to obtain any intelligence the U.S. military was arresting any Iraqi they deemed necessary to interrogate, and according to one soldier “they were (U.S. military) picking up people for anything, at a drop of a hat.” However even after many of these people were brought to Abu Ghraib to be interrogated, the military officials conducting the interrogations had very little to no experience with interrogations, and being out-manned “380 MP’S guarding thousands of inmates” little intelligence was produced. The Iraqis however were now starting to accept rewards for any crime they committed against any U.S. military personnel which included car bombings, assassinations, and sniping. Even though people in the U.S. were told that there was no insurgency going on, that all changed when the Jordanian Embassy was bombed, followed by the U.N. Now the Bush Administration and the U.S. had no choice but to face the fact that there indeed was an insurgency.

Following the recent upscale attacks that the Iraqis had been demonstrating, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld personally went to Iraq to observe the situation. While there he found out that there was very little intelligence being produced, which led to even more arrests, and again would prove nothing. With the frustration growing over no intelligence Donald Rumsfeld gave a green light to apply the same harsh interrogation measures that were used at Guantanamo Bay. Some of the techniques used were isolation, light deprivation, and twenty straight hours of interrogations, and making the prisoners face their phobias.

Some of the abuse that went on at Abu Ghraib consisted of prisoners being “kept naked and hands cuffed to bars” and others had worn woman’s underwear on their head. According to one MP who worked the night shift when questioned he stated “I took it to another level” which goes to show you that the abuse was severe. Other abuse consisted of inmates being forced to masturbate with female officers being present, some inmates being placed on a box with a hood over their heads, and wires put on them, so that if they stepped off they’d be electrocuted. Many if not most of these techniques were direct violations of the Geneva conventions, especially Article 3 of the 1949 convention which states “that people being detained shall be treated humanely.”

In 2004, 60 Minutes II had broadcasted the stories of abuse. What was programmed showed photographs of the abuse that had been taking place. These events seemed to damage the American military, and as one Lieutenant Colonel put it “We went into Iraq to stop things like this from happening, and indeed, here they are happening under our tutelage.”