Good Riddance

"Human rights? That's an invention of the Marxists."

Augusto Pinochet
(November 25, 1915 - December 10, 2006)

Augusto Pinochet, the Chilean general who orchestrated the overthrow of the democratically-elected socialist leader Salvador Allende in 1973 (September 11, 1973 to be exact -- hmmm), with ample assistance from these United States of America, is finally dead at the age of 91. In my opinion, this criminal lived far too long, certainly much longer than the innocent students, Allende supporters, labor leaders and other "communists" he had tortured and killed throughout the 1970s and 80s.

In his heyday, Pinochet and other fascist, authoritarian dictators in Bolivia, Paraguay, Uruguay, Brazil, and Argentina coordinated "Operation Condor," a military operation calculated to assassinate political dissidents in their respective countries. One such dissident was Orlando Letelier, a former high-ranking official in Allende's government and the former Chilean ambassador to the United States. After Allende's overthrow, Letelier left Chile for the United States and was working for the Institute for Policy Studies, a left-wing think tank in Washington, D.C. On September 21, 1976, ten days after the third anniversary of the coup, Letelier was driving to work with his American aide, Ronni Moffitt, and her husband Michael Moffitt. As the car entered Sheridan Square, only a few blocks from the White House, it exploded, killing both Letelier and Ronni Moffitt. Moffitt's husband was injured, but survived because he was riding in the back seat.

That is how fucking arrogant Pinochet was -- arrogant enough to commit an act of terrorism in the United States, less than a mile from the White House, which resulted in the murder of an American citizen. I guess he was emboldened by the fact that Hank Kissinger, the overrated, a-hole blowhard, always had his back. So did President Dick Nixon, another anticommunist with tunnel vision.

In all, about 3,000 people were killed or "disappeared" by Pinochet and DINA, Pinochet's secret service, and tens of thousands more Chileans were detained, jailed, and tortured on his watch. The cherry on the sundae? In 2004, it came out that Pinochet had stashed millions of dollars in secret bank accounts in foreign countries. Since dictators usually don't earn that much in annual salary, it was clear that this "anticommunist crusader," who purportedly committed the atrocities he did in order to save Chile from communism, had plundered the country's coffers over the years and never reported the stolen money to the tax authorities. Even Pinochet's supporters, and there are remarkably many, had a difficult time rationalizing this piece of news.

So, we bid you a long overdue farewell, Augusto. Hopefully, wherever you are now, you are being required by the Powers That Be to render some form of accounting for the brutal life you led, the innocent lives you ended, and the atrocities that were committed in your name and under your watchful guidance.

I hope you don't mind that I put your smug picture up on the LEFT.