Sometimes he cries, sometimes he just sighs, but always he looks up into my face in panicked bewilderment and says, 'Monsieur Ken, eh la, comment?!' I don't know exactly what the eh la means, but it punctuates everything; he says it in exasperation and passionate disbelief, exhaling, a low growl. But I understand 'Comment?' How, Mr. Ken? How did you people let it happen?

The UN was here when the massacres started, twenty-five hundred troops. UN Headquarters in New York knew it was being planned, they had files and faxes and informants and they sat in their offices, consulted each other, and ate long lunches.

Most UN forces ran to the airport, they couldn't get out fast enough. This is not a case in which the UN failed to send troops to stop genocide. An armed, predeployed UN force evacuated as soon as it started. All those signatures on the Genocide Convention, dozens of rapturously celebrated human rights treaties, a mountain of documents at UNHQ on the subject of genocide, law professors all over the world making a living talking about this, and we evacuated. Tanks and supply planes and helicopters and soldiers sat useless and stationary for six months in Somalia, two hours away by C-130, and then drunk peasants armed with machetes and lists of names killed 800,000 civilians in Rwanda. And we evacuated. Eh la, comment?

So I'm here a little late. My job is to help collect evidence for the UN War Crimes Tribunal, the biggest genocide investigation since the Holocaust. There are 800,000 bodies rotting under the African sun. The entire country smells of decomposing flesh. The sickly sweet smell is nauseating and trips the gag reflex. It gets onto your clothes, into your hair, onto the bed sheets, the kitchen utensils.