I'm trying not to be rude but the introductory paragraph of this essay basically makes it quite clear that this is not accurate.

Firstly, the Pol Pot regime, like other (socialist/communist/maoist/stalinist regimes) is prone to some defence on behalf of people who also share that political view point, or Marxist 'worldview'. The 'angle' that this author (in 1999 btw, which is important) is coming from is quite apparent in this introduction; Maoist. Many leftists thinkers and Maoists, even credible historians/experts on Cambodia (like Vickery and an early Ben Kiernan) felt a need to defend the regime, and as the author states; as Mao said, "It's right to rebel against reaction."

The article is not credible.

Like any piece of writing designed to 'overthrow "common knowledge" on this question', It is important to ask why? This person is trying to defend millions of deaths based on the political ideology upon which they were sacrificed. It also, in an unsurprising move, attempts to put the blame solely on "US Imperialism", rather than, you know, the people who committed these crimes against humanity. It is deplorable. S-21 was not invented by the United States. The killings at the January 1st Dam were not done by the United States. The decision to murder the innocent on a massive scale, as well as hundreds of thousands of members of the Khmer Rouge, was not made by the United States. It was made by a regime which was responsible for its own actions, as were the people who carried it out. If anyone apart from them were responsible, perhaps it would be their main foreign benefactor and cold war ally: China. Was Vietnam era US foreign policy good? No. It was terrible. But the mess in Indochina was not simply made by those in Washington.

In the past twenty years, particularly since the Khmer Rouge have been completely dissolved and as many of their leaders (which the writer of the article wasn't able to read) have in fact disclosed how the regime worked, its aims and its excesses, then I am willing to give just a modicum of the benefit of the doubt to this person. Many left leaning writers staked a claim in 'the Khmer Rouge weren't that bad' or 'the US is the real bad guy in this scenario', even Noam Chomsky. But to dig up this 'article' from whatever corner of the internet it is still being hosted on is a waste of time. There are many books that have been written which provide a balanced account of the regime, that are free from the kind of cold war politicising that this author was clearly mired in. I suggest reading Philip Short's Pol Pot: The History of a Nightmare. Anyone who wants to play 'left versus right' 'commie versus capitalist' with this history is missing the point of the tragedy that occurred in Cambodia and the confluence of historical factors which led that country into darkness. People are bad on both sides of the political spectrum, all genocides are committed with 'good intentions' in the worldview of the perpetrators.