In the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit, amen.
Posted on 12/10/2006 9:46:26 AM PST by My Favorite Headache
Hell has a new employee...Pinochet is dead at 91.
So if it's a mass killing, that's somewhat antiseptic due to distance, you're OK with it. But if the killing of the innocents is up close and personal, you disagree with it?
Is that a correct summation?
Afterwards? What are you referring to?
>>(Would that the Venezuelan military harbor a Pinochet who would clean the clock of the tyrant Chavez. Pat Robertson was 100% right on this matter.)
The Lefties on some neutral forums I'm on, screamed like stuck pigs when Pat made that statement, a sure indication he was onto something.
Look, c'mon. Even if you don't want to condemn Pinochet overall, you can't congratulate everything that he did afterwards. Just take a look at the Rettig Report/Report of the Chilean National Commission on Truth and Reconciliation:
http://www.usip.org/library/tc/doc/reports/chile/chile_1993_toc.html
(No, the USIP is not behind this report. CHILEANS were. They're just hosting the English translation)
Just randomly:
On September 18, 1973, Charles Edmund HORMAN LAZAR, 31, a United States citizen, filmmaker and writer, was executed. He was arrested on September 17, by a group of five or six soldiers while he was alone at his home in the Vicuña Mackenna neighborhood. When his wife arrived the next day, it was clear that their house had been raided. Documents that were part of an investigation Horman was carrying out along with other North Americans with whom he had set up a journalistic working group were taken in that raid. On the 17th, Charles Horman was sent to the National Stadium, where he was interrogated. Officials never acknowledged his arrest. Some weeks later his family was informed that he was dead and buried at the General Cemetery.
On September 19, 1973, Segundo Enrique THOMES PALAVECINOS, 15, a high school student and a worker, was killed. On that day he took a public bus on the way back to his house. Along the way at around 6:30 p.m., police stopped the bus in the Walker Martínez neighborhood and arrested all the male passengers. An eyewitness who was among those arrested reported this information to the family. Segundo Thomes' death occurred at 9:00 p.m. on September 19; the certificate says the body was found in the street with a bullet wound to the head and many to the abdomen. The family identified the body at the Medical Legal Institute, and it was buried in the General Cemetery.
On August 21, 1979, Federico Renato ALVAREZ SANTIBAÑEZ, a teacher and MIR activist, was killed. Police had arrested him August 14 in Santiago when he was allegedly preparing to place a bomb. Those who took part in the arrest told another story, that he was simply distributing pamphlets. The CNI later accepted responsibility for having arrested him. On August 20 the CNI took him to the Third military prosecutor's office to make a statement. Lawyers who were there saw that he was in very poor physical condition. He was then taken to the prison infirmary, but the CNI refused to take him to a hospital. The next day he died at the Central Emergency Clinic where he had been rushed. When he was brought in, he was diagnosed has having multiple contusions, hemoptysis, and lung failure. The official explanation of his death was that when he was arrested, a police officer had been forced to hit him on the head in order to subdue him. However, on the basis of the evidence gathered, and particularly the inquiry that the Medical Association made into the behavior of the medical people involved which noted that the cause of death was not any blow to the head he might have received, the Commission has come to the conviction that Alvarez died of the torture he had endured while being held prisoner at a CNI garrison, and it regards his death as a human rights violation for which government agents were responsible.
On October 22, 1984, the body of Juan Antonio AGUIRRE BALLESTEROS, 23, a baker who was not politically active, was found. At about 5:45 a.m. on September 4, 1984, a day on which people were being called out to participate in a national protest against the military government, police arrested Aguirre and some friends of his as they were on their way to work at the corner of Calle Brangranza and Avenida Salvador Gutiérrez in Pudahuel. He was blindfolded and taken to a place where he was physically abused, according to testimony by people who were being held along with him. His body was found 51 days later at the Codegua marshlands in the area of La Leona in San Rafael de Melipilla. Officials have never acknowledged his arrest. Taking into account the evidence gathered, the Commission has come to the conviction that Juan Aguirre died of the torture to which he was subjected by government agents, and that his body was thrown onto unused land to conceal what had happened; it regards his killing as a human rights violation for which government agents were responsible.
On February 22, 1985, Carlos GODOY ECHEGOYEN, a student who was active in the Socialist party, died. He was in Quintero together with other young Socialist party activists when police from the local police station arrested them and accused them of being involved in a guerrilla training school. The young people were interrogated and tortured at the Quintero police station and then transferred to Viña del Mar. Later they were taken back to Quintero, and members of DICOMCAR who had made a special trip from Santiago took charge of the operation. The young people were beaten and electrical current was applied to them. Godoy died as a result of this mistreatment on February 22, 1985. In their official report, the police said that the cause of death was a heart condition. Information in the hands of the Commission, including his prior medical records and the autopsy reports, leaves no room to doubt that Carlos Godoy's death was the result of torture that government agents had inflicted on him in violation of his human rights.
On June 24, 1989, police arrested Marcos QUEZADA YAÑEZ, 17, a student who was active in the Pro-Democracy party (PPD), on the street in Curacautín, and took him to the checkpoint. A few hours later he died as a result of "shock, probably from an electric current," according to the autopsy report. Taking into account the evidence gathered, the Commission has come to the conviction that Marcos Quezada did not commit suicide--and hence it rejects the official report--but that he died as a result of torture applied by government agents in violation of his human rights.
And there's more where that came from.
And as for killing Hitler, well, I never said I was against removing Allende, or even his entire gov't. What I have a problem is that Pinochet also did things to other people who were uninvolved, or at least didn't stop his people from doing so.
Well put, and ties it into current events.
Not exactly.
1. Motives are involved- aerial bombings conducted in open warfare, without deliberate targeting of civilian targets, is usually considered less morally opposable. I don't think that there are any criticisms of bombings of non-civilian targets. The a-bombs in Japan are considered a special exception.
2. Sorry I used the word "mass killing". I was referring to the sort of death squads, people running around dealing out vigilante "justice", torturing people to death, sort of thing that went around when Pinochet was in power.
"One death, a tragedy, one million deaths, a statistic" - Josef Stalin
Stalinist value systems should be abhorred and rejected.
Yes, I believe Jeane Kirkpatrick's most important work was her essay on authoritarians vs. dictatorships which noted important differences between the Pinochets and the Stalins of the world.
And here's Mark Steyn on Pinochet, essentially re-making one of her main points:
"As for General Pinochet, if there's a lesson in all of this it's that dictators should kill more people rather than fewer. His was a benign enough regime to permit thousands of Left-wing opponents to flee the country and form a vocal international opposition that made him, in the UN General Assembly and elsewhere, the poster boy for Right-wing bastards and a cause celebre in the drawing rooms of the West. The tragedy is that, in Chile's transition to democracy, the General has done more for human rights and global democracy than the entire posturing body of international law."
Todays "Progressive" students become tommorows Marxist committee chairmen.
This nation will become the USSA in short order unless a leader that can hold a candle to the likes of Pinochet comes forth.
The Rosenbergs got the chair.
How many of the imbeciles that walk into a voting booth these days even know who the Rosenbergs were.
"without deliberate targeting of civilian targets"
Oh, puhleeze. Explain how the firebombing or Dresden, Tokyo, and any number of other places, was not. Heck, Hiroshima and Nagasaki were 3rd-rate targets, because LeMay had already firebombed all the 1st- and 2nd-rate ones. The A-bombs were as military in nature as any of the firebombings.
I have a big problem with torturing people to death, and admit I don't know much about to what extent that occured in Chile. I suspect you don't, either. I have no problem with taking out the opposition without a trial in a civil war situation, which is what we're talking about here. I hope we both always live in a society that can afford the luxury of due process and trials for all misdeeds. I don't believe Pinochet did.
...and of course, Milton Friedman, who just died recently, advised Pinochet's government on economic policy - another reason for Chileans to consider the general a positive experience for their country.
In the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit, amen.
Dead? The horror... the horror... /s
This thread proves that Free Republic is teeming with 'conservatives' who don't give a damn about real freedom and democracy.
Pinochet was a brutal thug and I'm glad he's dead.
Descansar en paz, mi géneral.
>>Anyone know how many people were killed under Castro regime?
Rummel puts the numbers in the range 35,000 - 141,000, with a likely number of 70,000. That's through 1987, and I don't think it includes those killed by Castro's troops acting as mercenaries for the Soviets in Africa.
From this table:
http://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/SOD.TAB16A.1.GIF
From this page:
http://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/20TH.HTM
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