Phase I, for which the United States bore primary responsibility, was little investigated at the time, or since, and has never been described with anything like the condemnatory terms applied to phase II. The vast number of Cambodians killed, injured, and traumatized in this period were, in our conceptualization of chapter 2, “unworthy” victims. Phase II, the Pol Pot era, is the “holocaust” that was widely compared to the worst atrocities of Hitler and Stalin, virtually from the outset, with massive publicity and outrage at the suffering of these “worthy” victims.
