AP: Posthumous Pinochet Note Justifies Coup

[Eugene]

Posthumous Pinochet Note Justifies Coup

By EDUARDO GALLARDO
The Associated Press
Sunday, December 24, 2006; 12:59 PM

SANTIAGO, Chile -- In a letter to Chileans written to be published
after his death, Gen. Augusto Pinochet said he wished he hadn't had
to stage the bloody 1973 coup that put him in power, and called the
abuses under his long regime inevitable.

His fate was public shunning and unimagined loneliness, he said in
the message made public Sunday.

-snip-

Pinochet's "message to all my compatriots to be published after my
death" was made public by the Pinochet Foundation, a group of former
aides and followers. Its president, Hernan Guiloff, said he received
the text from Pinochet in 2004 and decided to make it public "on this
day of peace" _ Christmas Eve.

In the six-page text, Pinochet wrote that "I have left no room for
hatred in my heart."

"My destiny is a kind of banishment and loneliness that I would have
never imagined, much less wanted," he added.

-snip-

Full article: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/12/24/AR2006122400230.html

Aw, the poor tyrant! :nopity:

[DavidDvorkin]

1. He has no room left for hatred

Gee. I bet a lot of his compatriots still have plenty of room for it, and very understandably.

[progdonkey]

4. he really is a saint...

He would have to be to forgive all those evil dissenters who forced him to disappear and summarily execute them after they opposed his benevolent coup. He didn't want to massacre everyone in Chile Stadium, but you can't make an omelet without breaking some eggs. All they had to do was obey; was that so difficult? :sarcasm:

[Cleita]

2. Yeah, tell that to his victims, that it was inevitable.

Rot in Hell you bastard!

[roody]

3. He is disgusting.

[Rageneau]

5. The Republicans should name an airport for him...

Like they do for other fascists.

[Judi Lynn]

6. Holy smokes! Now he's done it. He finally hacked off the nastiest hogs in his country, too!

Many people who endorsed the dictatorship's firm hand against communists and other leftists turned against Pinochet after hearing allegations that his family spirited $28 million into overseas accounts.
(snip)

(Where did they THINK a man who had been a military officer would GET brazillions of pesos?)

The remains of more than 1,000 of the people killed for political reasons under the dictatorship have never been found, and Pinochet wrote that the circumstances of many of the deaths and disappearances will never be known.

"I state that I am proud of the huge action that we had to undertake to prevent Marxism-Leninism from reaching total power," he said.

But he added: "If the experience was to repeat itself, I wish I had a greater wisdom."
(snip/)

(He was starting to fear the voices calling out to him from the graves all over Chile, where he had his officers fling Allende supporters out of helicopters into the ocean, rivers, lakes, and onto the Andes Mountaintops, after drugging them just enough to make them easy to handle.)

[Igel]

7. Here's the letter. PDF, in Spanish.

http://www.lanacion.cl/prontus_noticias/site/artic/20061224/asocfile/ASOCFILE120061224124515.pdf

[Warren DeMontague]

8. Yes. Chile was in danger of becoming a totalitarian state under its democratically elected

leadership. Therefore, we had to have a coup and impose a totalitarian state.

:eyes: