Tuesday, April 20, 2004

The Pentagon as Global Slumlord

By Mike Davis

The young American Marine is exultant. 'It's a sniper's dream,' he tells a Los Angeles Times reporter on the outskirts of Fallujah. 'You can go anywhere and there so many ways to fire at the enemy without him knowing where you are.'

'Sometimes a guy will go down, and I'll let him scream a bit to destroy the morale of his buddies. Then I'll use a second shot.'

'To take a bad guy out,' he explains, 'is an incomparable 'adrenaline rush.'' He brags of having '24 confirmed kills' in the initial phase of the brutal U.S. onslaught against the rebel city of 300,000 people.

Faced with intransigent popular resistance that recalls the heroic Vietcong defense of Hue in 1968, the Marines have again unleashed indiscriminate terror. According to independent journalists and local medical workers, they have slaughtered at least two hundred women and children in the first two weeks of fighting. "

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