2004 Year in Review: The Conflict in Iraq
— -- For U.S. troops who spent their first Christmas in Iraq in December 2003 battling a bloody insurgency, the year 2004 began on a hopeful note.
In early January, the Coalition Provisional Authority's chief administrator, Paul Bremer, announced a "limited" release of Iraqi prisoners. Under the new program, Bremer said "hundreds of Iraqi detainees" would be allowed to return to their families in an attempt to "provide a second chance to some who made the mistake of opting against the new Iraq."
Little did Bremer -- and other U.S. officials -- know that within a few months, Iraqi prisoners would spark a public relations firestorm and reignite a debate about the U.S. occupationq. Details of the sadistic, sexually explicit abuse of Iraqi prisoners at Baghdad's notorious Abu Ghraib prison emerged not long after U.S. troops marked the first anniversary of the Iraq invasion in March 2004.
Soldiers Shown Giving Thumbs-Up Sign by Body of Dead Iraqi Prisoner
A year after the invasion, insurgents armed with bombs, mortars and other explosive devices were racking up a deadly toll, primarily in the "Sunni Triangle" region of central Iraq.
A landmark anniversary ABC News poll -- co-sponsored by leading British, Japanese and German networks with field work conducted by the British Oxford Research International -- found that one year later, most Iraqis were ambivalent about the invasion.
Poll: Most Iraqis Ambivalent About the War, But Not Its Results
While most Iraqis -- especially in the Shiite-dominated south and Kurdish north -- said their lives had improved, major worries continued to plague Iraqi citizens. The lack of security and the destruction of infrastructure -- primarily power supply -- were chief concerns, the poll found. Most Iraqis, though, expressed satisfaction with the new freedoms of speech, religious expression, and access to goods and services since the fall of Saddam Hussein.
The good will generated by the U.S.-led reconstruction efforts in Iraq took a pounding toward the end of April, when photographs showing the abuse of Iraqi prisoners by a handful of members of the 372nd Military Police Company, an Army Reserve unit, were made public. Seven members of the unit -- including three women -- were charged in the scandal, although critics have maintained that the finger of blame points higher up the Defense Department chain.
U.S. Military 'Cover-Up' Allegations
The prisoner abuse scandal and the increasingly bloody insurgency did not, however, derail the planned "handover of power" in June 2004. Amid tight security, the official handover ceremony took place two days ahead of schedule in Baghdad.
In a low-key ceremony attended by only a handful of journalists -- including ABC News' Peter Jennings -- Bremer handed interim Iraqi Prime Minister Ayad Allawi a leather-bound transfer document on June 28.
Barely three days later, in another surprise move, deposed Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein made his first public appearance in a Baghdad courtroom six months after his capture near his hometown of Tikrit. Dressed in a pinstriped suit, the once-formidable Iraqi dictator verbally sparred with the judge over a 30-minute hearing, according to Jennings, the only network anchor present.
In Baghdad, Jennings on Iraq Handover
Contrary to what most Pentagon planners at the start of the Iraq campaign believed, Saddam's capture did not stem the insurgency spreading across the country. Under a blistering August sun in the Shiite holy city of Najaf, U.S. and Iraqi forces clashed with fighters loyal to radical cleric Muqtada al-Sadr. Peace was finally restored after Iraq's top Shiite leader, Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, intervened to end three weeks of fighting that put some of Shiite Islam's holiest sites in peril.
The central Iraqi city of Fallujah became the next venue for a massive military assault in November, when U.S. and Iraqi troops stormed the insurgent-held city after intelligence reports indicated that Jordanian terrorist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi was based there.
With self-proclaimed al Qaeda ties, Zarqawi's group Tawhid al Jihad unleashed a grisly pattern of kidnappings and beheadings in Iraq. Hostages such as U.S. engineer Eugene Armstrong and U.S. contractor Nick Berg were brutally beheaded before cameras and the grisly videotapes were posted on the Internet.
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