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

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.

Bachelet is smart enough to know that if she tries anything like what Allende did (with her father's collusion), she won't last for even one term in office. She is therefore behaving herself (so far), proceding with extreme caution and adopting only modest socialist positions -- such as expansion of the national health care system and opposition to tax cuts. She and her socialist party favored Hugo Chavez for appointment to the UN Security Council but wisely backed off when it became clear that this did not sit well with Chileans. Her speeches are laden with all the usual leftist buzz words -- "diversity," "reparations" and the like. Has she ever expressed regret about Allende's attempt to impose soviet style communism on Chile? Nope.

I doubt General Pinochet is in any way amused by her ascension to power.

"Yes, the restraint shown on those he only had tortured but not killed was truly admirable. And, I know he had all of his countrymen's interests primarily at heart. Not just his own personal lust for power. A true elightened despot. Furthermore, the freedom and prosperity he provided the citizens of Chile, during that time, must have been truly intoxicating."

I see you know nothing of the history of Chile during that time, of what Chile was facing when Allende made his move to communize those people and bring them into the soviet domain. The drunken Allende (yes, he was falling down drunk for much of his last year in power) brought Chile right to the brink of civil war, inviting Castro down there to harrangue the Chilean people from the National Stadium in Santiago and organize teams of marauding militia thugs. The 3 or 4 thousand who died during Pinochet's restoration of order would pale in comparison to the number who would have died in that war.

General Pinochet -- Hero of the Chilean People

General Pinochet and our Lying Media

Fidel, Pinochet and Me

An article that appeared in the Wall Street Journal shortly after Pinochet's recent arrest summarizes what I discovered: "Salvador Allende reached the presidency of Chile in 1970 with only 36 percent of the vote, barely 40,000 votes ahead of the candidate of the right. In Mr. Allende's 1,000 days of rule, Chile degenerated into what the much-lionized former Chilean President Eduardo Frei Montalva (father of the current president) called a 'carnival of madness' . . . The Chilean Supreme Court, the Bar Association, and the leftist Medical Society, along with the Chamber of Deputies and provincial heads of the Christian Democrat Party, all warned that Allende was systematically trampling the law and constitution. By August 1973, more than a million Chileanshalf the work forcewere on strike, demanding that Allende go. Transport and industry were paralyzed. On Sept. 11, 1973, the armed forces acted to oust Allende, going into battle against his gunslingers. Six hours after the fighting erupted, Allende blew his head off in the presidential palace with an AK-47 given to him by Fidel Castro.

Chile con Commies

There is lots more information, in case you want to educate yourself on how and why Pinochet took and maintained control and what was at stake. Allende was an outlaw and his allies were equally criminal. Even the Supreme Court of Chile said so. Those Justices asked Pinochet to restore order. Did innocent people die during this time? Yes, they did, just as innocent people die in any conflict of this kind. But, like the left, all you can do is carry on disingenuously about all the "innocents" who were "tortured" and "killed" by that "evil dictator" -- as though though the great majority of those killed weren't the bad guys.

Did innocent people die during this time? Yes, they did, just as innocent people die in any conflict of this kind. But, like the left, all you can do is carry on disingenuously about all the "innocents" who were "tortured" and "killed" by that "evil dictator" -- as though though the great majority of those killed weren't the bad guys.

Now that I have been so thoroughly and unbiasedly "educated" on the history of the political situation of Chile in 1973, I think I see what you are saying. General Pinochet "bravely" created a fascist dictatorship by force in order to save the country from "moving" to a communist dictatorship. Got it.

Anyway, enough history for now. Let's look to the future.

1) That senile old bedlamite will dead before his next birthday.
2) Even if he manages to a weasel a couple of extra months of life in an already pitiful existence, he will spent that as a complete and total pariah to the civilized world.
3) An communist educated socialist now runs his country.

So, he will soon be free to carry on his "glorious battle" against the "bad guys" who he had killed in the unrelenting fires of Hell.

I hope it was all worth it for him.

They would welcome a strong man leading a strong police force and army.
A strongman will bring order to the country, and that is also the aim of the United States Army. A strongman will allow us to withdraw from this thankless nation building task.

I can see it now...

FREE SADDAM! FREE SADDAM! IRAQ NEEDS A STRONGMAN!
(I don't know how to type that in Arabic)

However, I'm sure they could find some other lunatic currently in a military prison awaiting charges of "crimes against humanity" who would take the job. There tons of those guys around. And, It's not like it hasn't been tried before.

He may be a b@st@rd. But, he's our b@st@rd

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