In the years after the &lt;a href="September%2011%20attacks"&gt;9/11 terror attacks&lt;/a&gt;, Hanley reported extensively on the conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq. Before the 2003 U.S. invasion, he reported from Iraq on the lack of evidence of weapons of mass destruction in that country, discrediting official U.S. claims. He was the first journalist to report on the prisoner abuses at Abu Ghraib and other U.S. prisons in Iraq, months before photos emerging from Abu Ghraib drew international attention to the story.