Jen Banbury is an American playwright, author and journalist. She studied at Yale University [ when? ] and was a member of Manuscript Society. After publishing plays and a novel, she turned to reporting in 2003, becoming a freelancer who has reported for NPR, Salon.com, and other organizations. In 2003 and 2004, she reported from Baghdad for Salon. On March 3, 2004, Salon published her story "Guantanamo on Steroids", one of the earliest articles about U.S. soldiers' abuse of Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib. It was listed as one of the "Best of Salon" for 2003. [1] Her Salon reporting was cited and her story "Night Raid in Baghdad" was reprinted in Boots on the Ground: Stories of American Soldiers from Iraq to Afghanistan by Clint Willis. [2]
Iraq actively researched and employed weapons of mass destruction (WMD) from 1962 to 1991, after which it destroyed its chemical weapons stockpile and halted its biological and nuclear weapon programs as required by the United Nations Security Council. The fifth president of Iraq, Saddam Hussein, was internationally condemned for his use of chemical weapons against Kurdish civilians and military targets during the Iran–Iraq War. Saddam pursued an extensive biological weapons program and a nuclear weapons program, though no nuclear bomb was built. After the Gulf War, the United Nations located and destroyed large quantities of Iraqi chemical weapons and related equipment and materials; Iraq ceased its chemical, biological and nuclear programs.
The 2003 invasion of Iraq had unprecedented US media coverage, especially cable news networks. US media was largely uncritical of the war, with many viewers falsely believing that Saddam Hussein and Iraq were involved with the 9/11 attacks. British media was more cautious in its coverage. The Qatari Al-Jazeera network was heavily critical of the war.
The Nayirah testimony was false testimony given before the United States Congressional Human Rights Caucus on October 10, 1990, by a 15-year-old Kuwaiti girl who was publicly identified only as Nayirah at the time. In her testimony, which took place two months after the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, she claimed to have witnessed Iraqi soldiers taking babies out of incubators at a Kuwaiti hospital before looting the incubators and leaving the babies to die on the floor. Nayirah's statements were widely publicized and cited numerous times in the United States Senate and by American president George H. W. Bush to contribute to the rationale for pursuing military action against Iraq. Her portrayal of Iraqi war crimes was aimed at further increasing global support for Kuwait against the Iraqi occupation during the Gulf War, which resulted in the expulsion of Iraqi troops from Kuwait by a 42-country coalition led by the United States.
Anne Longworth Garrels was an American broadcast journalist who worked as a foreign correspondent for National Public Radio, as well as for ABC and NBC, and other media.
Judith Miller is an American journalist and commentator who is known for writing about Iraq's alleged weapons of mass destruction (WMD) program both before and after the 2003 invasion, but her writings were later discovered to have been based on fabricated intelligence. She worked in the Washington bureau of The New York Times before joining Fox News in 2008.
Janis Leigh Karpinski is a retired career officer in the United States Army Reserve. She is notable for having commanded the forces that operated Abu Ghraib and other prisons in Iraq in 2003 and 2004, at the time of the scandal related to torture and prisoner abuse. She commanded three prisons in Iraq and the forces that ran them. Her education includes a Bachelor of Arts degree in English and secondary education from Kean College, a Master of Arts degree in aviation management from Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, and a Master of Arts in strategic studies from the United States Army War College.
Abu Ghraib is a city in the Baghdad Governorate of Iraq, located just west of Baghdad's city center, or northwest of Baghdad International Airport. It has a population of 189,000 (2003). The old road to Jordan passes through Abu Ghraib. The government of Iraq created the city and Abu Ghraib District in 1944.
Megan Ambuhl is a former United States Army Reserve soldier who was convicted of dereliction of duty for her role in the prisoner abuse that occurred at Abu Ghraib prison, a notorious prison in Baghdad during the United States' occupation of Iraq.
During the early stages of the Iraq War, members of the United States Army and the Central Intelligence Agency committed a series of human rights violations and war crimes against detainees in the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. These abuses included physical abuse, sexual humiliation, physical and psychological torture, and rape, as well as the killing of Manadel al-Jamadi and the desecration of his body. The abuses came to public attention with the publication of photographs by CBS News in April 2004, causing shock and outrage and receiving widespread condemnation within the United States and internationally.
Michael Ratner was an American attorney. For much of his career, he was president of the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR), a non-profit human rights litigation organization based in New York City, and president of the European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights (ECCHR) based in Berlin.
Marla Ruzicka was an American activist-turned-aid worker. She believed that combatant governments had a legal and moral responsibility to compensate the families of civilians killed or injured in military conflicts.
Susan Straight is an American writer. She was a National Book Award finalist for the novel Highwire Moon in 2001.
Bisher Amin Khalil Al-Rawi is an Iraqi citizen, who became a resident of the United Kingdom in the 1980s. Arrested in Gambia on a business trip in November 2002, he was transferred to United States military custody and held until 30 March 2007, in extrajudicial detention in the United States Guantanamo Bay detention camp at its naval base in Cuba. His Guantanamo Internment Serial Number was 906. The Department of Defense reports that Al Rawi was born on 23 December 1960, in Baghdad, Iraq.
The Christian Peacemaker hostage crisis involved four human rights workers of Christian Peacemaker Teams (CPT) who were held hostage in Iraq from November 26, 2005 by the Swords of Righteousness Brigade. One hostage, Tom Fox, was killed, and the remaining three freed in a military operation on March 23, 2006.
The Iraq War, also referred to as the Second Gulf War, was a prolonged conflict in Iraq lasting from 2003 to 2011. It began with the invasion by a United States-led coalition, which resulted in the overthrow of the Ba'athist government of Saddam Hussein. The conflict persisted as an insurgency arose against coalition forces and the newly established Iraqi government. US forces were officially withdrawn in 2011. In 2014, the US became re-engaged in Iraq, leading a new coalition under Combined Joint Task Force – Operation Inherent Resolve, as the conflict evolved into the ongoing insurgency.
Ali Bader is an Iraqi novelist and a script writer, regarded as the most significant writer to emerge in Arabic world in the last decade. author of eighteen works of fiction, and several works of non-fiction. His best-known works include Papa Sartre, The Tobacco Keeper, The Running after the Wolves, and The Sinful Woman, several of which have won awards. His novels are quite unlike any other fictions in Arabic world of our day, as they blend character study, social criticism, philosophical reflection, and explicit language. Bader was born in Baghdad, where he studied western philosophy and French literature. He now lives in Brussels.
A number of incidents stemming from the September 11 attacks have raised questions about legality.
Leila Fadel is a Lebanese American journalist and the cohost of National Public Radio's Morning Edition, a role she assumed in 2022. She was previously the network's Cairo bureau chief. Fadel has chiefly worked in the Middle East, and received a George Polk Award for her coverage of the Iraq War. She is also known for her coverage of the Arab Spring.
Ilene Prusher is an American journalist and novelist.