Yesterday, Amy Goodman interviewed John Pace, Former U.N. Human Rights Chief, Iraq. He only recently left Iraq.
Goodman asked him to respond to Peter Maass’ piece in last May‘s New York Times Magazine entitled, “The Way of the Commandos” that said, “The template for Iraq today is not Vietnam to which it is often been compared but El Salvador. Where, a right wing government backed by the United States fought a leftist insurgency in a 12-year war beginning in 1980. The cost was high. More than 70,000 people were killed, most of them civilians in a country with a population of just six million. Most of the killing and torturing was done by the army and the right-wing death squads affiliated with it.”
In a nuanced reply Pace concluded, “I would personally much prefer to — for the benefit of clearer analysis focus on the — on the fact that Iraq itself presents and refrains from comparing it to behavior patterns and other situations. Having said so, it is correct and my observations would confirm that at least at a certain point last year and in 2005, we saw numerous instances where the behavior of death squads was very similar, uncannily similar to that we had observed in other countries, including El Salvador.”
He also regrets “hardly any of this violence is ever investigated or followed up.”
Today, the Washington Post reports that Shi’ites are being told to leave their homes in predominately Sunni neighbourhoods or face death. Could these be the Baathist militias the U.S. began funding last year?