SOME PEOPLE DIE. SOME PEOPLE DON'T. By Charles P. Pierce

[kpete]

SOME PEOPLE DIE. SOME PEOPLE DON'T.
By Charles P. Pierce on September 10, 2014



And the sea gave up the dead which were in it; and death and hell delivered up the dead which were in them: and they were judged every man according to their works.
--Revelations 20:13.

Henry Kissinger, a war criminal of an earlier time, has been making the rounds, shilling a new book, and clearing his throat in front of whatever microphone happens to be at hand. Yesterday, he popped by The Takeaway with John Hockenberry to make sure his amorality was still whole and complete going into its seventh decade. He did not disappoint. Guest host Todd Zwillich tried to get a straight answer about Kissinger's -- and the U.S. government's -- role in the coup that overthrew Salvador Allende in Chile, and the subsequent rise of the murderous regime of Augusto Pinochet. Kissinger thereupon disappeared in a cloud of squid ink.

It made me think of your history in places like Chile. Was it the case that realism trumped democratic idealism there when you engineered the coup against Salvador Allende, was that an example of that?

HK: Ahem. You know one trouble with discussion of this...You're referring to an event that happened 50 years ago, and so it's very hard to reconstruct...

TZ: 40, yes.

HK: Or 40 years ago. It's very hard to reconstruct. The fact is I did not engineer a coup against Allende. Allende was overthrown by his military with whom we had no contact with two years earlier or three years earlier when he came in.

TZ: The head of the Chilean army, General Rene Schneider, was assassinated in his car pursuant to a CIA operation that you did help initiate. You said you turned off but you did help initiate.

HK: That was three years earlier.

You all know how that is. You can lose track of the elected governments you overthrow. They all blend together after a while.

TZ: Correct

HK: It was not an operation that we initiated. It was not planned as an assassination, and we turned it off once we became aware. But that happened three years earlier. That was not in connection with this.

TZ: Many other people testified in front of the Church Commission in the Senate later on that in fact you were well informed of that operation even after officially turning it off in a memo -

HK: Let me tell you something here-it's an issue that your audience cannot possibly know much about.

This happened over 40 years ago, it has been exhaustively discussed. It is a reflection of a period in which the divisions in America were so great that opponents seemed to take a perverse pleasure in charging the people with whom they disagreed on other points with sort of criminal activities. To have a meaningful discussion, you have to begin with the premise that serious people are trying to do the best for their country. We have been trying to overthrow President Assad. We overthrew, in this administration, we supported and took military action in Libya for the purpose that America has an interest in bringing about democratic government. It's a well-established fact. What the details were in 1971, with all due respect to you, it's not an appropriate subject here because it's easy to fish out individual statements before committees. I think a national debate would be helped if we assumed that serious people were trying to achieve serious objectives and to ask what these objectives were. Not to see whether there is one act taken by some outlying CIA group.

How serious people fell for this kind of bullshit remains a mystery lost in time. Kissinger is saying that we didn't engineer the coup but, if we did, it wasn't any different than what we did in Libya, or what we tried to do in Syria, because what we tried to do in Chile was to "bring about democratic government," but what we did was condemn the country to 17 years of authoritarian brutality, and bring a terrorist act right to the streets of Washington, but we didn't engineer the coup, anyway, and who are you to bring it up, you miserable little worm? Don't you know I used to hump Jill St. John? Don't you know Metternich when you see him? Mein fuhrer, I can valk!

If you need a corrective, the good people at the National Security archives are happy to oblige -- here: http://www2.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB437/ http://www2.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB255/ http://www2.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB125/
http://www2.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB470/.
You should read all that before reading about the democratic government our efforts helped bring about. That government, by the way, killed as many American citizens as ISIS has killed so far. Congratulations to Zwillich for at least trying to pin this ancient ghoul down for his crimes. More shame to us as a self-governing democracy that Kissinger is allowed any platform that doesn't have a pillory atop it.

Way more links:
http://www.esquire.com/blogs/politics/Henry_Kissinger_Arranges_A_Murder_Of_History



**********

In related news from the Undead,
Dick Cheney spoke to the Republicans in the Congress yesterday.

So if you meet me
Have some courtesy
Have some sympathy, and some taste
Use all your well-learned politesse
Or I'll lay your soul to waste

[malaise]

1. Sadly the agenda is the same for all of them

so no one has been punished for war crimes. Until the war criminals are sent to prison this shit will continue but the sad truth is that this shit is American foreign policy.

[Octafish]

2. You can lose track of the elected governments you overthrow. They all blend together after a while.

Incredible.

Almost as incredible as a MSM reporter asking about Rene Schneider.

[dixiegrrrrl]

4. -"it's an issue that your audience cannot possibly know much about. "

Because we censored the hell out of that story.

Gotta admire his reasoning. When the "stuff in the past doesn't count" argument loses, go for the "Americans are too dumb to know anything" argument.

[Octafish]

6. Absolutely! That's why his ilk so hates the Web.

"The issues are much too important for the Chilean voters to be left to decide for themselves... l don't see why we need to stand by and watch a country go communist because of the irresponsibility of its own people." -- Henry Kissinger on the US-backed coup d'etat in Chile.

And we wonder why the US keeps moving to the right, even when we vote in leaders who promise to move policy to the left.

[tularetom]

3. Far from our only war criminal, but undoubtedly our greatest

Cheney being a distant second.

[Avalux]

5. EVERYONE dies.

Eventually....and they can't take their money, their stuff, their power, their greed with them.

I have some consolation in knowing that. Someday, Dick Cheney will be dead and alone with nothing but himself and his horrific deeds.

[Octafish]

7. Cheney Channels Goya (not for the graphically squeamish)