[tarheelswamprat]

Sometimes one gets a little smelly taking out the trash. He was brutal and bloody but sometimes sometimes nasty work has to be done. I much prefer it when it is done by the people in their own country rather than by us.

Pinochet bashers are the sort who probably couldn't admit that our Founding Fathers didn't establish our Republic just by writing and signing a few flowery documents, they actually had to kill (gasp!) more than a few of their fellow Tory/Loyalist countrymen.

[RedStateRocker]

It is, to me, a fine and dangerous line in what we excuse (or do) in the name of combating evil.

[Alter Kaker]

Pinochet bashers are the sort who probably couldn't admit that our Founding Fathers didn't establish our Republic just by writing and signing a few flowery documents, they actually had to kill (gasp!) more than a few of their fellow Tory/Loyalist countrymen.

It's one thing to defend Pinochet, it's another to libel the Founding Fathers by comparing them to a tinpot Latin American dictator who tortured civilians to death, and who established a dictatorship in what had been Latin America's oldest and strongest democracy.

Was electing Allende a very bad mistake? Certainly. Could Pinochet have been even more worse? Absolutely. But I don't think either of those lets Pinochet off the hook. He cheated the hangman by dying in his bed.