Gen. Pinochet, 91, fighting for life (suffered heart attack, last rites given)

AP on Yahoo ^ | 12/3/06 | Eduardo Gallardo - ap

[NormsRevenge]

SANTIAGO, Chile - Gen. Augusto Pinochet, whose 17-year dictatorship carried out thousands of political killings, widespread torture and illegal jailings, clung to life in a Chilean hospital Sunday after suffering a heart attack and being administered last rites.

Just eight days earlier, the 91-year-old former strongman took full responsibility for the actions of his 1973-90 regime after long insisting any abuses were the fault of subordinates.

Pinochet underwent an emergency angioplasty to restore the flow of blood to his heart, and doctors described his condition as "serious but stable." They planned to perform bypass surgery later in the day, state television reported.

"We are now in the hands of God and of the doctors. My father is in very bad condition," Pinochet's younger son, Marco Antonio Pinochet, said at Gen. Luis Felipe Brieba Military Hospital.

Dr. Juan Ignacio Vergara, a member of the team attending the former leader, said the heart attack was "indeed life threatening," especially because of Pinochet's age.

Pinochet's health had been deteriorating for years. Doctors implanted a heart pacemaker in 1993 and he suffered from diabetes and arthritis. He also was diagnosed with mild dementia caused by several strokes.

The health problems helped Pinochet escape trial for the human rights abuses committed during his regime, with courts ruling out proceedings at least twice in recent years as victims of his rule pressed efforts to bring him to justice.

Last week, Pinochet was put under house arrest after being indicted in the executions of two bodyguards of Salvador Allende, the freely elected Marxist president who was toppled in a bloody 1973 coup led by Pinochet as commander of the Chilean military.

The heart attack came barely a week after Pinochet's 91st birthday on Nov. 25, an occasion he marked by issuing a statement for the first time taking full political — though not explicitly legal — responsibility for abuses committed by his regime.

"Today, near the end of my days, I want to say that I harbor no rancor against anybody, that I love my fatherland above all and that I take political responsibility for everything that was done which had no other goal than making Chile greater and avoiding its disintegration," the statement said.

Pinochet fell ill around 2 a.m. and was rushed to the military hospital accompanied by his wife, Lucia Hiriart.

He underwent an angioplasty, in which doctors introduce a catheter to a patient's blocked artery and inflate a small balloon to enlarge it, restoring blood flow to the heart. Doctors said the procedure was successful and Pinochet remained conscious in the intensive care unit.

Pinochet's younger son said his father had been "virtually rescued from death" with the angioplasty. But the former leader's spokesman, retired Gen. Guillermo Garin, also said last rites had been administered.

Pinochet's grown children and other relatives, former aides and retired military officers went to the hospital, as did Chile's army chief, Gen. Oscar Izurieta.

As news of the heart attack spread, some 50 Pinochet supporters, most of them women, gathered in front of the hospital, some holding his portrait.

"How could I not be desperate? He's like a father to me, and we all owe him so much," said Julieta Aguilar, standing outside holding a small bronze bust of Pinochet.

Ricardo Lagos Weber, spokesman for President Michelle Bachelet, said the government was closely following the situation.

Critics of Pinochet have often argued that his health problems were being exaggerated to help him avoid trial.

"Pinochet is used to becoming ill every time a court ruling is near," human rights lawyer Hiram Villagra told Radio Bio Bio after the heart attack was reported. "He is hospitalized every time he faces an indictment, that is why we have doubts this time, too."

The Santiago Court of appeals was scheduled to rule Monday on Pinochet's appeal of last week's indictment and the house arrest order.

The house arrest was the fifth such action taken against Pinochet on charges stemming from human rights violations during his dictatorship.

The indictment alleges kidnapping and homicide in connection with the deaths of two Allende bodyguards who were arrested the day of the coup, Sept. 11, 1973. Both were executed by firing squad four weeks later, the military regime announced at the time.

According to an independent commission appointed by the first civilian government after Pinochet's rule, 3,197 people were killed for political reasons during his regime and more than 1,000 of them were "disappeared" by burying them in secret graves or tossing them in the sea.

Pinochet faces two other indictments, one tied to allegations of rights abuses and one involving tax avoidance charges.

[fieldmarshaldj]

Wow, you just keep wasting JimRob's bandwith with your pro-communist crap, doncha ? I'm not interested. Go back to DU, punk.

[rogator]

"Me too. Vaya con Dios, mi General."

Pinochet like many other leaders was a mixed bag.
He led a divided nation through some rough times.
By our standards he was a ruthless dictator; but in fact, like Franco, he saved his country from Communism.
My daughter was a Rotary exchange student in his regime.
She had two host families during that year. One was pro-pinochet and one anti-pinochet, probably typical of Chile at that time.
We should pray for his salvation.

[eleni121]

When commies get their grubbies on governments--there is no more democracy of any kind.

Take a look at the 20th century!

[attiladhun2]

I am surprised at the FR venom for Pinochet. He offed a stinking Stalinist and saved Chile (and possibly the rest of S. America) from another social and political experiment that would have produced mountains of corpses. Maybe 3,000 people (mostly Commies) died at the hands of Pinchet. Conservatively, 15,000 died as a result of Castro's firing squads and prisons, but the MSM saves its bile to meet out to the Pinochet regime. Castro gets a pass and is even lauded.

[California Patriot]

Yes. And Venezuela is unfortunate not to have another Pinochet right now. It's the only way to deal with a Hugo Chavez -- and his ilk.

[Diocletian]

3,000 dead in 20 years? 3,000 is a slow day for a Marxist regime.

[lndrvr1972]

He is the proof that the "Good Die Young."

[Regulator]

whose 17-year dictatorship carried out thousands of political killings, widespread torture and illegal jailings

Thus preventing the Chilean people from ending up in a slave state run by frigid freaks as bad as Sendero Luminoso, and dying by the millions of starvation or mass murder.

Instead they live in arguably the best Latin American country going.

Screw everyone here who never figured that out over the last 30 years.

[Diocletian]

Good man.

[philetus]

I wonder if he even has a clue where he's going?

[Yardstick]

Regardless of how much the Left hates Pinochet, I have no love for him at all.

The Left hates Pinochet precisely because Pinochet defeated the Communists in Chile. How can you have no appreciation for that?

Obviously, it was good that Chile did not become a Soviet satellite because of his coup

Oh, okay, so you do see the very good thing that Pinochet did for Chile, and the Americas generally, by crushing the communists there.

...but Pinochet was brutal despot.

Well yes, I suppose he was brutal to communists, but don't you see the virtue in brutalizing communists when the alternative is a communist dictatorship?

It seems to me that Pinochet is similar to the Shah of Iran in this regard. The Shah was hard on radical Islamists the way Pinochet was hard on Communists. I guess you could despise the Shah for this, but in hindsight we easily see the virtue in those oppressive policies, and we are reasonable to think that it would have been preferable to have the Shah around now instead of the current very dangerous regime. I suspect that your feelings about Pinochet would be less confused if we could somehow experience how things would have been without him.

Allende was also bad, but Pinochet was no improvement from a human rights perspective.

True only if you're not able distinguish the relative of virtue of brutalizing Communists versus brutalizing innocent members of the "bourgeoisie". That sounds harsh, but there is such a thing as reality.

Pinochet was simply amendable enough to accept ideas for reform.

But isn't this kind of flexibility the kind of thing that separates Pinochet from your typical iron-fisted despot?

And how many evil despots step down willingly to hand power over to a democratically elected civilian government? Pinochet proved that he was in a different and distinctly less evil category than a Castro or a Stalin when he did that.

[sangfroid]

General Pinochet is a patriot and a hero. God bless him!

Major Achievements: Restored order to the then-chaotic Chile, stopped runaway inflation in its tracks, and converted the Chilean system to capitalism under the advice of Milton Friedman

However, there was that little issue with the methods employed to acheive these goals. For example, the colorful style of brutal and bloody political repression. The violence and bloodshed of the coup itself was continued during Pinochet's administration. Once in power, Pinochet ruled with an iron hand. Dissidents who were murdered for speaking out against Pinochet's policies are said to have "been disappeared." It is unknown exactly how many people were killed by government and military forces during the 17 years that he was in power, but the Rettig Commission listed 2,095 deaths and 1,102 "disappearances." Torture was also commonly used against dissidents. Thousands of Chileans fled the country to escape the regime.

The General may not be very high up on the list to receive any sort of 'divine blessing' any time soon.

[Bon mots]

Hey, Mussolini made the trains run on time and Hitler eliminated the communists from Germany. Are you going to offer Sainthood to those folks as well?

They were leftist monsters and left death and destruction in their wakes. Pinochet only put on a necessary revolution to save his country. He had seen enough of its destruction at the hands of Allende and his band of incompetent Marxists.

The left was preparing to do the same, so Pinochet did it in self defense, and then built a nation in a part of the world better known for economic misery. The Rettig Commission's wildest claim is that Pinochet killed a paltry 2000 Commies and agitators to stabilize the country. We killed a million Vietnamese and did not successfully staunch Communism in that nation.

The left also said the same of Lee Kuan Yew - father of Singapore. He was an authoritarian. A dictator. Hitler for Chrissakes. But he built the most prosperous nation in Asia - the Switzerland of Asia where everything works and is lovely. If you ever go there, I recommend the Chili Crab.

[sangfroid]

Current standings at Dictatorofthemonth.com

(And the General doesn't even make the top 10.)

Rank/ Platz	Name	Country/ Land	Score/ Ergebnis
1	Adolf Hitler	Germany/ Deutschland	44.19
2	Josef Stalin	USSR/ UdSSR	43.57
3	Benito Mussolini	Italy/ Italien	39.25
4	Mao Zedong	China	39
5	Ho Chi Minh	North Vietnam/ Nordvietnam	34.25
6	Francisco Franco	Spain/ Spanien	34.02
7	Muhammad Reza Pahlavi	Iran	33.83
8	Vladimir Lenin	USSR/ UdSSR	33.75
9	Saddam Hussein	Iraq/ Iraq	33.5
10	Kim Il Sung	North Korea/ Nordkorea	33.5
11	Josip Broz Tito	Yugoslavia/ Jugoslawien	33.5
12	Deng Xiaoping	China	33.25
13	Augusto Pinochet	Chilé	33.04
14	Muammar Gaddafi	Libya/ Libyen	32.75
15	Kim Jong Il	North Korea/ Nordkorea	32
16	Park Chung Hee	South Korea/ Südkorea	32
17	Enver Hoxha	Albania/ Albanien	31.5
18	Ferdinand Marcos	Philippines/ Philippinen	31.5
19	Fidel Castro	Cuba/ Kuba	31.26
20	Janos Kadar	Hungary/ Ungarn	30.75
21	Haile Selassie	Ethiopia/ Äthiopien	30.57
22	Pol Pot	Cambodia/ Kambodscha	30,44
23	Fulgencio Batista	Cuba/ Kuba	30
24	Juan Peron	Argentina/ Argentinien	29.83
25	Francois Duvalier	Haiti	29.5
26	Charles Taylor	Liberia/ Liberien	29.33
27	Anwar Sadat	Egypt/Ägypten	29
28	Omar al-Bashir	Sudan	28.75
29	Meles Zenawi	Ethiopia/ Äthiopien	28.74
30	José Efraín Ríos Montt	Guatemala	28.5
31	Alfredo Stroessner	Paraguay	28.5
32	Erich Honecker	GDR/ DDR	28.3
33	Maumoon Gayoom	Maldives/ Maldiven	28.11
34	Nikita Khruschev	USSR/ UdSSR	27.95
35	Idi Amin Dada	Uganda	27.86
36	Ruhollah Khomeini	Iran	27.5
37	Mobutu Sese Seko	Zaire	27.5
38	Francisco Macias Nguema	Equatorial Guinea/ Äquatorialguinea	27.25
39	Klement Gottwald	Czechoslovakia/ Tschechoslowakei	27.25
40	Alecksander Lukashenko	Belarus/ Weißrußland	27.18
41	Saparmarut Niyazov	Turkmenistan	27
42	Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo	Equatorial Guinea/ Äquatorialguinea	26.83
43	Hugo Chavez	Venezuela	26.68
44	Tsar Nicholas Romanov II	Russia/ Rußland	26.5
45	Hissène Habré	Chad/ Tschad	26.5
46	Havez al-Assad	Syria/ Syrien	26.5
47	Mengistu Haile Mariam	Ethiopia/ Äthiopien	26.25
48	Slobodan Milosevic	Yugoslavia/ Jugoslawien	26
49	Manuel Noriega	Panama	26
50	Robert Mugabé	Zimbabwe/ Simbabwe	25.64
51	Islom Karimov	Uzbekistan/ Uzbekistan	25.58
52	Pervez Musharraf	Pakistan	25.25
53	Etienne Gnassingbé Eyadéma	Togo	25.25
54	Todor Zhivkov	Bulgaria/ Bulgarien	25.13
55	Isaias Afewerki	Eritrea	25.06
56	Jean-Bédel Bokassa	Central African Republic/ Zentralafrikanisches Kaiserreich	24.5
57	Ali Abdullah Saleh	Yemen/ Jemen	23.5
58	Samuel Kanyon Doe	Liberia	23.5
59	Levon Ter-Petrosyan	Armenia/ Armenien	23.17
60	Than Shwe	Myanmar	22.5
61	Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq	Pakistan	22
62	King Mswati III	Swaziland/ Swasiland	21.5
63	Sani Abacha	Nigeria	21.5
64	Yong Shikai	China	20.5
65	Wojciech Jaruzelski	Poland/ Polen	20.07

[Non-Sequitur]

When commies get their grubbies on governments--there is no more democracy of any kind.

How much democracy of any kind was there in Chile during the 17 years of Pinochet's regime?

[Non-Sequitur]

Wow, you just keep wasting JimRob's bandwith with your pro-communist crap, doncha ? I'm not interested. Go back to DU, punk.

Surely there is a fascist website somewhere you would be comfortable with?

In fact I think the powers that be would be more in line with my way of thinking. I support the Democratic process and will oppose any police state of any kind, be it headed by Castro or Pinochet. I don't differentiate between communist oppression or fascist oppression. You have no trouble with tossing out democracy for a tyranny so long as they label themselves correctly.

[RedEyeJack]

Allende, circa 1973, prevented Chile from following the path that Hugo Chavez is leading Venezuela down today. After last Sunday's election it looks like Chavez has consolidated his hold. Venezuela will explode in civil war unless the military intervenes and takes control. Chaos or stability which do you choose. The history of Latin American politics repeats this scenario at many times and many places. Pinochet preemptively stopped the process. Will someone do it in Venezuela? Will they have our support if they do?

[Wonder Warthog]

"Pinochet was his coutry's Stalin without the political classification. Comparing him to Abraham Lincoln is a gross insult to Lincoln."

That's funny. I don't recall Stalin voluntarily relinquishing power to a democratic government.

Pinochet did some bad things to overthrow the Communists. Lincoln did a LOT of bad (and highly un-Constitutional) things to defeat the South. The comparison is apt.

[Non-Sequitur]

Pinochet did some bad things to overthrow the Communists. Lincoln did a LOT of bad (and highly un-Constitutional) things to defeat the South. The comparison is apt.

Not at all. Lincoln's actions were overseen by Congress and the Supreme Court. Pinochet's were not. Lincoln submitted to a presidential election as mandated by the Constitution. Pinochet fought the referendum to the end and then made sure the Constitution allowed him to retain a great deal of power - head of military, senator for life, etc. Lincoln believed first and foremost in democracy. Pinochet believed in the police state, even before his coup. There is no apt comparison between Abraham Lincoln and his actions under the Constitution and a thug like Pinochet.

[Wonder Warthog]

Yeah, sure. Suspending habeas corpus was "Constitutional". Arresting newspapermen and closing newspapers was "Constitutional". Lincoln DESTROYED the Constitution to "save the Republic".