"The US has spent the bulk of its war-on-terror existence raining terror on various parts of the globe - a factoid that should have by now become tiresome to repeat, save for the fact that it has not yet managed to cross the threshold of mainstream discourse. Even before the attacks of 11 September 2001, the US had already carved out a name for itself in the realm of extremely violent behaviour, ranging from more blatantly violent campaigns of indiscriminate bombing to the less overt starvation of an estimated half a million Iraqi children via sanctions."