Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison was notorious long before U.S. troops were found guilty of abusing detainees there. Originally built in the 1960s, Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein used the site to house and later execute political prisoners. He closed the prison in 2002, but when the U.S.-led Coalition ousted Hussein by force in 2003, it was reopened. Because Coalition forces used it as an internment camp, it also became a forward operating base – and a target for insurgents. The Battle of Abu Ghraib Begins With Coordinated Assault Insurgent battles in Iraq don't always get their due attention from historians, but for the longest time, the biggest obstacle to American success in the Iraq War was these insurgent groups. Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the leader of al-Qaeda in Iraq, was one of the architects of Iraq's Sunni insurgency. Determined to hit the Abu Ghraib base to show that nowhere in the country was safe as long as the Americans were in control, he launched an attack on Abu Ghraib so...
