If Pinochet Is Guilty, so Is Bush
“Pinochet was called to power. He put down terrorism.”
Is this an example of American revisionism? Feeling guilty about America’s role in the Chilean overthrow? Here are some facts you seem to have overlooked.
CIA Director Richard Helms told of how President Nixon gave him “the marshall’s baton” to conduct covert activities designed to stop Allende from being inaugurated in November 1970.
Failing on that front, the Agency paid an extreme right-wing group to assassinate Gen. Rene Schneider, Chile’s chief of staff. When even the brutal murder of Schneider didn’t succeeded in blocking Allende’s inauguration, the CIA began to destabilize his government.
For three years, CIA officials helped instigate strikes in strategic sectors of the economy, promoted violence, and initiated smear campaigns against Allende in the media. Washington applied a credit squeeze to make Chile’s economy squirm.
This destabilization campaign had its desired effect. Social conflict grew to the point where the military commanders, with U.S. encouragement, decided to stage a coup. As tanks and aircraft bombarded the presidential palace on Sept. 11, 1973, U.S. Navy vessels appeared off of Chile’s coast. U.S. intelligence vessels monitored activity at Chile’s military bases in order to notify the coup makers, should a regiment loyal to the Allende government decide to fight.
Notice the date. September 11. Yep that’s right. It was America that was the terrorist country on that Sept. 11.
Quit trying to rewrite history and accept responsibility for the bullsh*t your country has pulled around the world.
Keep this type of bullsh*t reporting up and next we will hear from your site that Saddam possessed WMDs and was planning on invading the U.S.
Paul Craig Roberts replies:
This is unbelievable ignorance. The problem in Chile was a Chilean problem, and it was solved by Chileans.
If any of this bullsh*t was true, Pinochet would have a wonderful defense: “The Amerikans did it.”
The John McCain of Bagram Prison
In her LA Times piece “The John McCain of Bagram Prison,” Margaret Carlson wonders if the Americans who tortured “Dilawar” at the Bagram prison were as bad as the Vietnamese who tortured John McCain. Consider what McCain was doing in the skies of Vietnam at the time he was captured by the Vietnamese, and it was the Vietnamese who tortured him; now look at how the Americans went halfway around the world to capture an unfortunate villager who was just minding his family and tortured him just as badly. No, the Americans are much worse. Imagine the Vietnamese had come to Dallas, picked a man off the street, and tortured him. Now that would make the Vietnamese as bad as the Americans.
War is Ugly
War is ugly. Innocent people die or are severely maimed in the process, and no rational thinker denies this. However, I believe there are actions and people in this world that are even uglier than the war required to defeat them. Saddam Hussein is evil. Removing Saddam Hussein from power required war (diplomacy failed consistently and he was in violation of 14 UN resolutions when we invaded), and I do mourn the deaths that have resulted from his removal. However, I also mourn the deaths of the hundreds of thousands tortured and murdered under his rule and am thankful that he is no longer able to carry out those murders.
Scott Horton replies:
Dear Mr. Glendenning,
We at Antiwar.com share your opinion of war as ugly. As Jefferson said, it is “the greatest scourge of mankind,” and as such, is justified only in self-defense, and even then only as a last resort.
It is also true that even when the war is far away, we lose our liberty here in our “Homeland.” The founders were highly suspicious of the centralizing and freedom-destroying consequences of maintaining standing armies during peacetime, a legacy that still lives in the minds of many Americans. Perhaps this is why the government hasn’t let there be a period of peace since 1941.
Saddam Hussein was indeed a cruel murderer. That’s how he got the job. He did the worst of his killing with our government’s help and approval – the very men running the Bush administration now.
The U.S. is where he got his WMD in the first place, and they were all destroyed by 1991.
America has killed at least as many Iraqis as Hussein, and he had 40 years, we’ve had 14. George Bush’s father not only massacred tens of thousands of retreating soldiers on the “Highway of Death,” he encouraged and then abandoned the 1991 Shi’ite uprising in a Bay of Pigs or Hungarian Revolt-style betrayal.
Since invading, we’ve replaced Saddam; first with Allawi the cold-blooded murderer and now with Hussein’s old friend Talabani. Self-described “Hero in Error” Ahmed Chalabi is now in charge of the oil ministry.
The U.S. military has been torturing people too.
The CIA’s National Intelligence Council; Bush’s personal friend, the CIA’s new director Porter Goss; the former head analyst at “Alec Station,” the CIA’s old bin Laden unit, Michael Scheuer; and even Fox News say that the invasion of Iraq has only helped al-Qaeda recruit masses of new followers determined to kill Americans, at the same time that our own military is stretched beyond capacity and recruitment levels plummet. Can you feel the draft?
The Bush administration deliberately lied about the WMD and ties to al-Qaeda in order to justify invasion. They recognized that “regime change” was not a good enough reason, so they made some reasons up. Turns out that “regime change” suits their purposes well enough after the fact, but not before.
The political appointees in the Pentagon had some help telling their lies from the Israelis, who wanted Saddam gone for their own reasons, and the Iranians, by way of their spy, the convicted felon Ahmed Chalabi, because they had their own grudge against Iraq – their old enemy, and the only secular Arab state.
War on Terror winners so far: Osama bin Laden, Ayatollahs Khamenei and Sistani, Ariel Sharon.
In regards to Iraq’s supposed violations of UN resolutions, being primarily libertarians and conservatives here at Antiwar.com, we don’t give a hoot what a UN resolution says, especially when it’s an attempt to mandate our own decisions, such as which country that has never attacked us we should invade next or when.
Would you take lives, and give your own life or that of your son or daughter, to better the people of Iraq? Even if so, do you have the right to make others pay your way?
By the way, the U.S. Constitution grants no authority to this government to invade foreign states for their own good, but only to defend the U.S. from attack. It used to be the law.
