"The Chilean case raises most of the issues connected with covert action as an instrument of American foreign policy. It consisted of long, frequently heavy involvement in Chilean politics: it involved the gamut of covert action methods, save only covert military operations; and it revealed a variety of different authorization procedures, with different implications for oversight and control."---from the 1975 Church Commission report on covert activities in Chile.
SANTIAGO--He's dead, the heart-attack sank him. It's a shame all of the thousands of victims he had murdered didn't get to live as-long as he did, but at least he was hounded and felt a siege-mentality in his final-years. Next-time, Mossad, or someone else should just grab his ilk and shoot them in-the-face. He was a tyrant and a murderer who thought he was Pericles--he wasn't, just another crook neo-Nazis everywhere could mourn. And were the executions and tortures 'for Chile', as he contended? Nope. But why did the political chaos in Chile happen? Socialist President-elect Salvador Allende had won the 1973 elections, and ITT was alarmed--violent-arrests and repression ensued.
ITT wanted cheap-copper from Chile for communications-cables (and a windfall-profit), so they tapped the Nixon administration to tap the CIA and Kissinger, and they hired Pinochet to form a coup against the newly-elected government. It should be said that CIA-activity was ongoing--it predated the Nixon administration--but reached its zenith under Nixon, as many other covert-ops did during that legendary period. Allende allegedly committed-suicide in the first hours of the coup, but this is still hotly-contested by the Left and the right in Chile today. Not every wound has been healed in the Andean nation.
Thousands were murdered by the military under Augusto Pinochet, who ascended as dictator until 1991 when his rule crumbled. Before Pinochet, Chile had known an unbroken-continuity of democracy from 1932. This was virtually unheard-of in the region in 1973. Since the end of his regime, he has been protected by the American State Department and the British Foreign & Commonwealth Office. Spain and Chile have valiantly attempted to extradite him for-years. In-light of all this, does Hugo Chavez sound paranoid, especially considering there was a coup-attempt in 2002 in Venezuela? If you think so, you're probably sympathetic with people like Pinochet and Klaus Barbie. Pinochet was little-more than a pimp and a murderer for American corporations, this is his legacy, there is nothing-else.
The Church Commission on the 1973 Coup:
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i would say thank goodness.
ReplyDeleteThe Grinch is dead! 30 years after Franco, yee-haw!
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