While the invasion of Afghanistan was widely seen as a justified act of self-defence in response to 9/11, the questionable legality of the Iraq invasion in 2003, practices of extraordinary rendition, the suspension of due process and Habeas Corpus in Guantanamo Bay, and the exposure of the photos of Arab prisoners being humiliated at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, led to a serious loss of legitimacy and questions about whether the USA had deviated from its own basic principles in attempting to address this security threat.