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Pinochet Dead!

http://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory?id=2714477

Former Chilean Dictator Pinochet Dies
Former Chilean Dictator, Gen. Augusto Pinochet, Dies in Hospital of Heart Complications at 91

A supporter of former Gen. Augusto Pinochet holds a portrait of him outside the Military Hospital in Santiago, Chile, Thursday, Dec. 7, 2006. Pinochet is recovering and in good spirits although exhausted after suffering a weekend heart attack, doctors said on Wednesday. The 91-year-old former dictator's condition is no longer critical, but he will remain at the Santiago Military Hospital for at least another week. (AP Photo/ Santiago Llanquin)
International Headlines


SANTIAGO, Chile Dec 10, 2006 (AP)— Gen. Augusto Pinochet, the fierce anti-communist dictator who ruled Chile with an iron fist from 1973 to 1990, died Sunday from heart complications, the Santiago Military hospital reported. He was 91.

The brief announcement by the hospital said Pinochet' condition worsened suddenly and doctors rushed him back to the Intense Care Unit, from which he had been removed only on Thursday while recovering from an acute heart attack he suffered one week ago.

Relatives and friends of Pinochet were arriving at the hospital.

Pinochet had been admitted a week earlier to the hospital with what doctors described as an acute had attack. He underwent an angioplasty procedure in which doctors enlarge the clogged artery to allow restoration of the blood flow to the heart,

Pinochet died al 2:15 p.m. (1715 GMT), the hospital said.

Copyright 2006 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
 
Augusto Pinochet dies

Well, he's finally gone and many people can now be calml knowing that this man has finally left the earth.

It must be so good for his relatives to have that peace that comes with the certainty of knowing what happened to their family memeber.

He didn't allow some people this luxury.

So long.
 
people are crying, people are cheering... more cheering, actually...


and me... I just hope this can be used as a new start for Chile... I couldn't care less for him... I don't care if he died, I don't care when he lived...

I want this country to look forward... and I hope we finally can
 
Jara sang his song a weapon, in the hands of love / You know his blood still cries from the ground....

How appropriate.
 
"I don't see why we need to stand by and watch a country go communist due to the irresponsibility of its people. The issues are much too important for the Chilean voters to be left to decide for themselves." - Henry Kissinger
 
the American Right celebrates Pinochet, misses him greatly, and remembers him fondly:

[q]Former Chilean dicator Augusto Pinochet died Sunday at age 91. National Review Online asked some experts how he ought to be remembered.

Anthony Daniels
The reason Augusto Pinochet was universally hated by leftists and many academics worldwide was not because he was so brutal or killed so many people (he hardly figured among the 20th century’s most prolific political killers, admittedly a difficult company to get into) but because he was so successful. There is no doubt that there was indeed much brutality and hardship in the wake of his coup, but unlike the much less reviled military dictators of Argentina and Uruguay, he actually achieved something worthwhile, namely the prosperity of his country.

Worse still, he did so by adopting the very reverse of the policies for so long advocated by third worldists and academic development economists, who were certain that the cause of the third world’s poverty was the first world’s wealth, and that everything would have to change before anything could change. His demonstration that a country could draw itself up by its bootstraps, by embracing trade, was most unwelcome. It forced a change of world outlook, never welcome to those who live by ideas.

That a hick general from a humble background should so obviously have done much more for his country than a suave, educated, aristocratic Marxist was a terrible blow to the self-esteem of the Left in every Western country. As for holding a referendum on own his rule and abiding by the result when he lost, that was quite unforgivable, setting as it did a shocking precedent for left-wing dictators.

— Anthony Daniels, author of Utopias Elsewhere , is a doctor in England.


Roger W. Fontaine
Augusto Pinochet enjoys a reputation outside of Chile that is the reverse of the adage about a prophet in his own country. Enlightened opinion elsewhere, he is loathed: the butcher of human rights; a reactionary speed bump delaying social progress in Chile and Latin America for a generation.

In Chile, it’s a bit different. Human rights did suffer under Pinochet. And Chile spent years under Pinochet recovering from his predecessor Salvador Allende’s mad dash to a Soviet style command economy. It has also lately been shown he was personally corrupt. Finally, at least for Americans, there was the small matter of the caudillo’s secret services committing murder on the streets of Washington, D.C.

But Pinochet will also be remembered as leaving the country better off than he found it. It was Pinochet who obeyed his own electorate by stepping down from power after he lost a national referendum. And unlike his fellow Latin American generals, he let market-oriented civilians lay the basis for Chile’s economy — the most productive in the region. Can his fellow caudillo in Cuba — soon to be among the departed as well — say the same?

— Roger W. Fontaine was a National Security Council staff officer in the Reagan administration. He is a guest lecturer at the Institute of World Politics.


Thor Halvorssen
As dissident hero Vladimir Bukovsky so accurately observed, “with the exception of the Black Death, torture is the oldest scourge on our planet (hence there are so many conventions against it).” Inspired by the Chilean congressional vote to remove Salvador Allende from power, Augusto Pinochet took full control of Chile — by force. He shut down parliament, suffocated political life, banned trade unions, and made Chile his sultanate. His government disappeared 3,000 opponents, arrested 30,000 (torturing thousands of them), and controlled the country until 1990. Some insist he “saved” Chile from Marxist tyranny and created an economic miracle. Allende, a democratically elected thug, had set about dismantling Chilean democracy and civil society. The argument goes that, had Allende become a Chilean Castro, it is probable many more would have died and millions suffered (the death and torture toll from Fidel Castro’s totalitarian dictatorship being far greater than Pinochet’s). Why only two alternatives? Why couldn’t Chile have enjoyed economic prosperity and the widespread protection of human rights and the rule of law? Freedom might have been a messy, clumsy, and imperfect alternative but despotism, as Pinochet and Castro demonstrate, is a lot messier. Pinochet’s name will forever be linked to the Desaparecidos, the Caravan of Death, and the institutionalized torture that took place in the Villa Grimaldi complex.

— Thor Halvorssen, a film producer and human-rights advocate, is president of the New York-based Human Rights Foundation.


Mario Loyola
A Spanish joke: a reporter traveled to Spain to learn what people think of Franco. Upon arriving in a village, the reporter asked one man, but the man insisted they walk out into the country. Yet once there, he still hesitated. "Let's go by that lake," he said. When they arrived at the lake, the reporter asked yet again, but the man insisted that they take a row-boat out of the middle of the lake. When they got there and the reporter asked again, the man finally leaned over and whispered, "I like him."

Pinochet's coup d'etat and the murder of Salvador Allende along with 3,000 or more suspected opposition members, were perhaps the worst thing that has ever happened to Chile, just as the Cuban Revolution was the worst thing that ever happened to Cuba.

But there is one vital difference between the two. Once he consolidated power, Pinochet worked hard to protect the bases of a modern progressive democracy. Castro, by contrast, made it his business to ruin those in his country — and now a new generation of Latin American leaders fondly dream of walking in his footsteps.

Pinochet did something else that few dictators ever do: Upon losing by a small margin in a plebiscite that pitted him against the entire spectrum of political opposition, he resigned. The crimes of Pinochet may be unpardonable. But at least he tried to redeem them.We shouldn't be surprised by the number of Chileans who are still thankful for that.
— Mario Loyola is a fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies .


Ion Mihai Pacepa
In my other life, as a Communist general, I lived under two tyrants who killed and jailed over one million people. Pinnochet saved Chile from becoming another Communist hell. God bless him for that, and may he be forgiven for his later aberrations. Not only in Chile does power corrupt.

— Lt. General Ion Mihai Pacepa is the highest-ranking intelligence officer ever to have defected from the former Soviet bloc. His book Red Horizons has been republished in 27 countries.


Otto J. Reich
Augusto Pinochet was a tragic figure. Instead of being remembered for saving Chilean democracy from a communist takeover, and starting the country on the longest-lasting economic expansion in Latin America, which he did, he will be remembered mostly for carrying out a brutal campaign of human-rights abuses.

Contrary to revisionist history and mainstream media myths, Pinochet’s military coup against President Salvador Allende was supported by a majority of Chileans, two-thirds of whom had voted against Allende in the 1970 election. The three-way electoral tie had been decided by the Chilean Congress in favor of Allende. By 1973, however, Chileans were demonstrating in the streets against shortages, inflation and unemployment brought about by Allende’s failed socialist policies.

Facing widespread opposition to his rule, Allende secretly prepared a “self-coup,” with the help of Fidel Castro, who surreptitiously sent large quantities of weapons to arm Allende’s minority of supporters. Army Commander Pinochet beat Allende to the coup, which was justified by the Allende-Castro plans. What was not justified was the bloodbath which followed, when Allende supporters and innocents alike were summarily executed, imprisoned and tortured, including loyal military officers who disagreed with the coup.

Today, thanks to the KGB files smuggled out of Russia by Vasily Mitrokhin, we know that Allende was receiving payments from the KGB. There is no doubt that if he had succeeded in his plans, Chile today would be an impoverished Communist prison like Cuba, instead of a shining example of democracy and prosperity. With some compassion and self-discipline, Pinochet could have been remembered as a liberator and not a despot. He was both.

— Otto J. Reich served President Bush from 2001 to 2004, first as assistant secretary of State for the Western Hemisphere and later in the National Security Council. He now heads his own international government-relations firm in Washington.[/q]



no, i didn't make any of that up.

better dead than red.
 
vaz02 said:
Why was Margret (sp) thatcher so upset over his death ?

Chile was the only South American which supported the UK in the Falklands War and she supposedly had a soft spot for Pinochet. :shame:It's sickening that he was allowed to return to Chile after he was arrested in the UK some years ago now for human rights abuses because he was supposedly too ill to stand trial and then surprise surprise his health improved after he had returned home.
 
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