Whenever a neo-colonial power - or a puppet politician like interim Iraqi Premier Iyad Allawi - orders the widespread bombing of civilian areas, as in Fallujah, the rationale invoked is "regrettable necessity". What is never mentioned is the real objective: collective punishment.

We know that we live in a world of double standards. In Fallujah the US has created a new and shadowy target-Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. Al-Zarqawi is a new excuse to justify the US's criminal actions. A year has passed since this new excuse was dreamed up, and every time they attack homes, mosques and restaurants, killing women and children, they say, "We have launched a successful operation against al-Zarqawi." They will never say they have killed him, because he does not exist.

I also saw four crippled US tanks and three abandoned Humvees.

In the Hasbiyyah area, I counted the bodies of at least six US soldiers lying on the ground.

Some of them were badly mangled with various bits blown off. Others were in better condition, as if they had taken small-arms fire.

I noticed two of the US soldiers were still clutching their guns tightly across their chests. But most of their weapons were missing.

Edward S Herman's landmark essay, "The Banality of Evil", has never seemed more apposite. "Doing terrible things in an organised and systematic way rests on 'normalisation'," wrote Herman. "There is usually a division of labour in doing and rationalising the unthinkable, with the direct brutalising and killing done by one set of individuals . . . others working on improving technology (a better crematory gas, a longer burning and more adhesive napalm, bomb fragments that penetrate flesh in hard-to-trace patterns). It is the function of the experts, and the mainstream media, to normalise the unthinkable for the general public.