Really, I always found it pretty useful. I guess this might be because when doing J->E translation I already had context from the source text. Still the WWWJDIC results at least link to ALC (which does give lots of context) or to Japanese Wikipedia entries (which can compare to the English version of the same article)
Thanks for the link! Somehow I'd never come across that site before (I guess because I've got a good densi jisyo. The only times I check out words online is when I want more context; in which case I go to the Japanese Wikipedia).
The question left open, though, is whether that's the word reporters normally would use. It's not clear in the examples whether or not the word is being used hyperbolically. I mean, just because you can say "Muhammad Ali annihilated his opponent" doesn't mean that "annihilate" is a synonym for "defeat".
For arguments sake: http://eow.alc.co.jp/%CE%AC%C3%A5/EUC-JP/ has lots of usage examples of 略奪 in context suggesting it does in fact mean looting.