Marines looted a Saddam palace on an afternoon tour in 2003

Evidence

To break up the tedium one day, a unit in the company left the base for a tour of another of Saddam’s palaces that was nearby. Sami went with his commanding officer, but the entire company soon joined in. As soon as they arrived there, the marines began acting like little kids, running through the palace and screaming to hear their own echoes. They climbed on top of the diving board and looked down upon the dirty pool. The afternoon was a bizarre kind of stress release, a free-for-all like nothing Sami had ever seen before. They began removing things, taking stuff—furniture, fixtures, anything they could get their hands on. They pillaged the guts out of the complex. Anything that moved, moved right into their hands. — Moustafa Bayoumi, How Does It Feel to Be a Problem? Being…, 249

Categorization

• CANDY: A startling, darkly funny image: adult marines acting like kids at a playdate, then stripping a palace.