Posted on 12/10/2006 6:01:03 PM PST by Dqban22
Edited on 12/10/2006 6:16:42 PM PST by Admin Moderator. [history]
Having recovered from the worst of his own socialist deliriums, George Orwell wrote, after viewing the carnage of the Civil War in Spain: "At an early age, I became aware that newspapers report no event correctly. But in Spain, I read for the first time articles which bore no relation to the facts, not even the relation implicit in an ordinary lie." Of no nation since would that doleful observation apply more keenly than to the Chile of Salvador Allende and of Augusto Pinochet.
(Excerpt) Read more at lyd.com ...
Allende was a toad, supported by the forces of international socialism, including US media and their ilk here
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
And STILL supported by our Marxist/liberal mainstream media and academics.
Left continues vicious campaign against Pinochet
Whelan, James R
Exclusive Report on Former Chilean President
While his tormentors are, ever more, the tormented, the old soldier himself is serene, his face ruddy from the now-fading sun of summer in the country, close by the sea, far from the madding crowd.
The old soldier is Augusto Jose Ramon Pinochet Ugarte, the 85-year-old former president of Chile and the man who headed the 1973 revolution that toppled the MarxistLeninist government of Salvador Allende Gossens. In recent weeks, the legal victories in a case that has, from the start, been short on law, long on political manipulation, have belonged to Pinochet.
But, Pinochet, during his enforced summer stay at his country house near Bucalemu, 80 miles from Santiago, had already come to terms with his fate, even before his legal situation had brightened.
The tormentors are many, around the world, but for the present purposes, they are the leaders of the Socialist government now in power in Chile. From the outset of the international hounding of Pinochet, the Socialists were willing accomplices of the Communists who were and are the driving force behind this lynch mob.
By early this year, there were multiplying signs that the government feared that matters had spun out of control, putting their own political fortunes at risk. The question now is whether they can control the wild whirlwind they did so much to sow.
Like sharks in a blood-fueled feeding frenzy, the Communists, ever more emboldened as they encountered no real opposition to their maneuvers, have:
* Filed charges against the present commanders-in-chief of the armed forces,- as well as against the Chief of Staff of the Air Force. The first of those suits was thrown out of court, but another had been filed asking that they be forced to testify as to what they know about the whereabouts of the bodies of 600 missing persons. Putting today's armed forces on trial rather than the soldiers of yesteryear, ratchets up the tension level considerably.
* Named Henry Kissinger in yet another suit, which is still under advisement. But, under the "international legal precedents" flowing from the Pinochet case, it would be enough for him to be accused by the judge to order his arrest-anywhere, through Interpol. The case is based on the hoary and discredited claim that the United States engineered the overthrow of Allende.
* Piled accusation upon accusation against Pinochet himself, in separate suits that now number more than 250. Theoretically, even if he should win one case, he then could tried on another, and then another. (A parallel: Amnesty International last June accused the United States and Britain of "war crimes" in their bombing of Serbia-bombing that some claim cost 5,000 civilian lives. It would then be as if Bill Clinton and Tony Blair, and everyone else involved in the bombing-from the British and U.S. and NATO high commands, to the pilots who flew the missions-could then face 5,000 separate trials for human rights violations.)
For Chile's Socialist government headed by Ricardo Lagos, the Pinochet case stole its thunder during its first year in office. And, it has kept the country bitterly divided, fighting a seemingly unending war over events that took place a quarter of a century ago.
'Pinochet Principle' Is Politicized Force
On one side: those who feel that Pinochet and the military saved Chile from becoming a Cuban-style Soviet dungeon (and, again like Cuba, an economic basket case).
On the other, those who charge that the military committed countless human rights outrages as they fought to stamp out those who had vowed to turn the country into a Communist dictatorship.
With the economy-the envy of Latin America and much of the Third World under the free market model erected by the military-now stumbling and slowing, tHe Lagos government arrived at the belated conclusion, beginning in January, that the genie of vengeance had to be stuffed back into the bottle.
The fact that the Socialist-led coalition is faltering on the political front, as well, with crucial congressional elections coming up in a few months, gave added impetus to that conclusion, expressed not explicitly but through clear signals.
On an international scale, the "Pinochet precedent"-nine parts political bombast and one part questionable law, or as Judge Robert H. Bork put it, "[W]hat is involved is not law but politicized force"-has already triggered its first repercussions (see box).
The rampage of the left against the right-- not so much as a hair has been disturbed on the head of anyone on the left-began on Oct. 16, 1998, with the Gestapo-style arrest of Pinochet in a London hospital where he was recovering from major back surgery. Just after midnight, 50 London police, many armed, swarmed into the hospital to seize this man, just weeks away from his 83rd birthday, asleep and under heavy sedation when they arrived.
They acted under an arrest warrant sworn by a Spanish judge named Baltasar Garzon, a man with a flair for publicity and careless judicial habits who is a lifelong Socialist. The warrant was so badly drafted that Britain had to send it back to Garzon with instructions on how to get it right. Meanwhile, Scotland Yard continued to hold Pinochet illegally, without any warrant.
His case dragged for 16 months through the British courts, then the House of Lords, then back to the courts. Along the way, the case established new "principles" of international law: A former head of state could now be arrested anywhere, on a warrant issued anywhere, on the mere allegation that he had committed human rights violations.
Later, that was expanded: It was enough that human rights violations were committed by subordinates to him-the principle of the so-called "verticality of command."
(Under that reasoning, any U.S. President-as commander-in-chief of the Armed Forces-could be jailed anywhere for human rights violations committed by U.S. troops at, say, Mylai in Vietnam-where U.S. troops did, in fact, commit a massacre of civilians).
Another "principle" that replaced longstanding custom: A diplomatic passport-- Pinochet had one-was worthless if someone decided that the crime you were charged with was a crime "against humanity."
Left-Wing Judge Buys Communist Charges
After 14 months and millions of dollars in expense, British Home Secretary Jack Straw found a political way out of the mess: He ordered medical tests for Pinochet. The blue-ribbon panel found-unanimously-that Pinochet was unfit to stand trial-anywhere. With that, he was allowed to fly back to Chile on March 3, 2000.
Within a few days of his arrival, another judge with a flair for publicity and judicial acrobatics decided that "anywhere" didn't include Chile. The judge, Juan Guzman, accepted charges made by a group of Communist lawyers that Pinochet was responsible for a series of 75 executions carried out shortly after the 1973 coup (even though no proof has yet been presented that the executions were even carried out as alleged).
Guzman then asked Chile's Court of Appeals to strip Pinochet of his immunity as a lifetime member of the Senate (a privilege reserved for former presidents, and one that the most recent ex-president has also availed himself of).
Guzman studied at the Sorbonne in Paris-a hotbed of revolutionary agitation during the '60s. While there, according to the leftist newspaper, Le Monde, Guzman learned "revolutionary justice." Guzman denies that. He does not deny, however, that when he returned to Chile, in 1970, he got his first job by appealing directly to the MarxistLeninist president, Salvador Allende.
The months following Guzman's legal ambush were pure agony for Pinochet-one legal reverse after another, one health crisis after another. He has been in and out of the hospital several times in the year since returning to what he thought would be a life like one of his military heroes, Gen. Douglas MacArthur, described when he said, "Old soldiers never die, they just fast away."
To fade away is precisely what Pinochet wanted, above all, surrounded by his wife and five children, 26 grandchildren and two great-grandchildren-the family that has always been the center of his universe.
Instead, at times during this past year, he must have often felt haunted by a grim forecast made in the closing days of his government by his Justice Minister, Hugo Rosende. Rosende was the leader of the hardline forces around Pinochet, arguing that it would be a fatal error to hand power over to leftist civilians who harbored an abiding hatred for him and all he stood for.
"If you do this, Augusto," Rosende is said to have warned, "the day will come when they will put you in a cage and parade you along the Alameda"-Santiago's main boulevard. Pinochet, however, went with the soft-liners, and handed over power.
From the very beginning, even before his arrest, the Christian Democrat-Socialist coalition that has been in power since 1991 has waged an unrelenting, passive-aggressive war against the military. Nonetheless, Pinochet-who returned to his role as Army commander-in-chief, assuming the Senate seat only in March of 1998-stood firm, but never rebellious.
Indeed, his chief tormentor-President Patricio Aylwin Azocar, who succeeded him as the first democratically elected president-said grudgingly of Pinochet that he had been a decisive force for stability, controlling the hotheads, during the precarious transition to full democracy.
By late last year, Pinochet's lawyers argued that his only chance was to be found unfit to stand trial, this time by Chilean doctors. A panel finally did examine him in January, and, with a sole dissent, they did find evidence of "moderate" brain damage, affecting his ability to participate fully in his own defense.
Accordingly, the lawyers told Pinochet that, when Judge Guzman arrived to question him as a prelude to ordering his arrest, he should refuse to answer any questions. Pinochet listened politely-then answered the questions.
His sense of dignity would not allow him to save himself by copping the equivalent of an insanity plea.
On January. 29, Guzman did order Pinochet's house arrest, preliminary to his being forced to stand trial as "the author of the crimes of kidnapping and homicide" in the execution of the 75 prisoners.
Since the bodies of 58 of them have never been found, Guzman invented a new -legal theory: "Ongoing kidnap"-even though death certificates had been issued for almost all of them, even though autopsies were performed on some of the bodies, even though the supposed "kidnappings" occurred 27 years ago. That device enabled him to brush aside the amnesty law that had benefited far more leftists than military. It also enabled him to ignore such precepts as due process, double jeopardy and statutes of limitations.
The Supreme Court-even though it had reprimanded Guzman several times for discussing ongoing cases with the press and for other aberrations (including, at one point, ordering Pinochet arrested even before he had been questioned about the crimes he was alleged to have committed, even before the court-ordered medical examinations had been done)-refused to oust him from the case. By now, Guzman knew he would never make it to the Supreme Court himself, but he also was an "untouchable," a legal El Cid to internationalists.
On March 8, the Court of Appeals ruled that there was insufficient evidence to charge Pinochet with direct involvement in the executions-but he could still be tried for covering up those yet unproven crimes. A few days later, Guzman ordered his house arrest ended, releasing him on the equivalent of US$ 3,400 bail.
Pinochet is, at the moment, free. But, barely a week passes that Communist lawyers-or those working closely with them-don't file new charges against him. Their motive is vengeance, pure and simple, since even if he were found guilty, over and over again, he could never go to jail, because Chilean law prohibits jail for any prisoner over 75 years of age.
For a time, it seemed as though the weight of such a mountain of accusations, of the bitterness and acrimony, the endless sniping, had broken the spirit of the old man. Pain, there unquestionably was, and often-along with the physical suffering.
But, the man I saw in recent days was a man whose mind and spirit had somehow soared over this last battlefield in his life. A deeply religious man, he confides his future to God and, on this earth, not to lawyers or judges or politicians, but to historians.
Given the implacability of the left, the massiveness of their propaganda machine, their domination of the world political scene, it may be a very long while before anyone can view the reality of Pinochet with equanimity. He knows that and it confers a kind of immunity of its own. And of peace, as well.
BY JAMES R. WHELAN
Mr. Whelan is working on a biography of Pinochet, and recently interviewed him over a period of eight hours, in three separate sessions spaced over ten days. He has published six books, five of them on Latin America, and written and reported on the region for more than 40 years.
Copyright Human Events Publishing, Inc. Apr 2, 2001
That is correct. However, he did have the power to rule prior to our Constitutional Conventions and the rule of democracy followed. In fact right after the Revolutionary War he was offered the role of King which he defiantly declined. In words to effect that he did not throw off the tyranny of the King of England to reimpose tyranny here.
And all these years the history books have been telling us he was elected in 1789 with all 69 electoral votes so that he could build a Republic
You have a marvelous grasp of the facts
I supose it was too much to ask for the democratic process to correct that when the generals had the guns so ready.
Briefly passed through Santiago in 1978 and remember seeing a lot of bullet pockmarks in the sides of stone buildings.
Wonderful observation of the limits that circumscribe a general's power to roll tanks into a city square and shoot a democratically elected president
If not for Franco, Spain, and then France and Italy would have fallen to the communists. If not for Pinochet, all of South and Central america would have fallen to the communists.
Left continues vicious campaign against Pinochet
Whelan, James R
Exclusive Report on Former Chilean President
While his tormentors are, ever more, the tormented, the old soldier himself is serene, his face ruddy from the now-fading sun of summer in the country, close by the sea, far from the madding crowd.
The old soldier is Augusto Jose Ramon Pinochet Ugarte, the 85-year-old former president of Chile and the man who headed the 1973 revolution that toppled the MarxistLeninist government of Salvador Allende Gossens. In recent weeks, the legal victories in a case that has, from the start, been short on law, long on political manipulation, have belonged to Pinochet.
But, Pinochet, during his enforced summer stay at his country house near Bucalemu, 80 miles from Santiago, had already come to terms with his fate, even before his legal situation had brightened.
The tormentors are many, around the world, but for the present purposes, they are the leaders of the Socialist government now in power in Chile. From the outset of the international hounding of Pinochet, the Socialists were willing accomplices of the Communists who were and are the driving force behind this lynch mob.
By early this year, there were multiplying signs that the government feared that matters had spun out of control, putting their own political fortunes at risk. The question now is whether they can control the wild whirlwind they did so much to sow.
Like sharks in a blood-fueled feeding frenzy, the Communists, ever more emboldened as they encountered no real opposition to their maneuvers, have:
* Filed charges against the present commanders-in-chief of the armed forces,- as well as against the Chief of Staff of the Air Force. The first of those suits was thrown out of court, but another had been filed asking that they be forced to testify as to what they know about the whereabouts of the bodies of 600 missing persons.
Putting today's armed forces on trial rather than the soldiers of yesteryear, ratchets up the tension level considerably.
* Named Henry Kissinger in yet another suit, which is still under advisement. But, under the "international legal precedents" flowing from the Pinochet case, it would be enough for him to be accused by the judge to order his arrest-anywhere, through Interpol. The case is based on the hoary and discredited claim that the United States engineered the overthrow of Allende.
* Piled accusation upon accusation against Pinochet himself, in separate suits that now number more than 250. Theoretically, even if he should win one case, he then could tried on another, and then another. (A parallel: Amnesty International last June accused the United States and Britain of "war crimes" in their bombing of Serbia-bombing that some claim cost 5,000 civilian lives. It would then be as if Bill Clinton and Tony Blair, and everyone else involved in the bombing-from the British and U.S. and NATO high commands, to the pilots who flew the missions-could then face 5,000 separate trials for human rights violations.)
For Chile's Socialist government headed by Ricardo Lagos, the Pinochet case stole its thunder during its first year in office. And, it has kept the country bitterly divided, fighting a seemingly unending war over events that took place a quarter of a century ago.
'Pinochet Principle' Is Politicized Force
On one side: those who feel that Pinochet and the military saved Chile from becoming a Cuban-style Soviet dungeon (and, again like Cuba, an economic basket case).
On the other, those who charge that the military committed countless human rights outrages as they fought to stamp out those who had vowed to turn the country into a Communist dictatorship.
With the economy-the envy of Latin America and much of the Third World under the free market model erected by the military-now stumbling and slowing, tHe Lagos government arrived at the belated conclusion, beginning in January, that the genie of vengeance had to be stuffed back into the bottle.
The fact that the Socialist-led coalition is faltering on the political front, as well, with crucial congressional elections coming up in a few months, gave added impetus to that conclusion, expressed not explicitly but through clear signals.
On an international scale, the "Pinochet precedent"-nine parts political bombast and one part questionable law, or as Judge Robert H. Bork put it, "[W]hat is involved is not law but politicized force"-has already triggered its first repercussions (see box).
The rampage of the left against the right-- not so much as a hair has been disturbed on the head of anyone on the left-began on Oct. 16, 1998, with the Gestapo-style arrest of Pinochet in a London hospital where he was recovering from major back surgery. Just after midnight, 50 London police, many armed, swarmed into the hospital to seize this man, just weeks away from his 83rd birthday, asleep and under heavy sedation when they arrived.
They acted under an arrest warrant sworn by a Spanish judge named Baltasar Garzon, a man with a flair for publicity and careless judicial habits who is a lifelong Socialist. The warrant was so badly drafted that Britain had to send it back to Garzon with instructions on how to get it right. Meanwhile, Scotland Yard continued to hold Pinochet illegally, without any warrant.
His case dragged for 16 months through the British courts, then the House of Lords, then back to the courts. Along the way, the case established new "principles" of international law: A former head of state could now be arrested anywhere, on a warrant issued anywhere, on the mere allegation that he had committed human rights violations.
Later, that was expanded: It was enough that human rights violations were committed by subordinates to him-the principle of the so-called "verticality of command." (Under that reasoning, any U.S. President-as commander-in-chief of the Armed Forces-could be jailed anywhere for human rights violations committed by U.S. troops at, say, Mylai in Vietnam-where U.S. troops did, in fact, commit a massacre of civilians).
Another "principle" that replaced longstanding custom: A diplomatic passport-- Pinochet had one-was worthless if someone decided that the crime you were charged with was a crime "against humanity."
Left-Wing Judge Buys Communist Charges
After 14 months and millions of dollars in expense, British Home Secretary Jack Straw found a political way out of the mess: He ordered medical tests for Pinochet.
The blue-ribbon panel found-unanimously-that Pinochet was unfit to stand trial-anywhere. With that, he was allowed to fly back to Chile on March 3, 2000.
Within a few days of his arrival, another judge with a flair for publicity and judicial acrobatics decided that "anywhere" didn't include Chile. The judge, Juan Guzman, accepted charges made by a group of Communist lawyers that Pinochet was responsible for a series of 75 executions carried out shortly after the 1973 coup (even though no proof has yet been presented that the executions were even carried out as alleged).
Guzman then asked Chile's Court of Appeals to strip Pinochet of his immunity as a lifetime member of the Senate (a privilege reserved for former presidents, and one that the most recent ex-president has also availed himself of).
Guzman studied at the Sorbonne in Paris-a hotbed of revolutionary agitation during the '60s. While there, according to the leftist newspaper, Le Monde, Guzman learned "revolutionary justice." Guzman denies that. He does not deny, however, that when he returned to Chile, in 1970, he got his first job by appealing directly to the MarxistLeninist president, Salvador Allende.
The months following Guzman's legal ambush were pure agony for Pinochet-one legal reverse after another, one health crisis after another. He has been in and out of the hospital several times in the year since returning to what he thought would be a life like one of his military heroes, Gen. Douglas MacArthur, described when he said, "Old soldiers never die, they just fast away."
To fade away is precisely what Pinochet wanted, above all, surrounded by his wife and five children, 26 grandchildren and two great-grandchildren-the family that has always been the center of his universe.
Instead, at times during this past year, he must have often felt haunted by a grim forecast made in the closing days of his government by his Justice Minister, Hugo Rosende. Rosende was the leader of the hardline forces around Pinochet, arguing that it would be a fatal error to hand power over to leftist civilians who harbored an abiding hatred for him and all he stood for.
"If you do this, Augusto," Rosende is said to have warned, "the day will come when they will put you in a cage and parade you along the Alameda"-Santiago's main boulevard. Pinochet, however, went with the soft-liners, and handed over power.
From the very beginning, even before his arrest, the Christian Democrat-Socialist coalition that has been in power since 1991 has waged an unrelenting, passive-aggressive war against the military. Nonetheless, Pinochet-who returned to his role as Army commander-in-chief, assuming the Senate seat only in March of 1998-stood firm, but never rebellious.
Indeed, his chief tormentor-President Patricio Aylwin Azocar, who succeeded him as the first democratically elected president-said grudgingly of Pinochet that he had been a decisive force for stability, controlling the hotheads, during the precarious transition to full democracy.
By late last year, Pinochet's lawyers argued that his only chance was to be found unfit to stand trial, this time by Chilean doctors. A panel finally did examine him in January, and, with a sole dissent, they did find evidence of "moderate" brain damage, affecting his ability to participate fully in his own defense.
Accordingly, the lawyers told Pinochet that, when Judge Guzman arrived to question him as a prelude to ordering his arrest, he should refuse to answer any questions. Pinochet listened politely-then answered the questions.
His sense of dignity would not allow him to save himself by copping the equivalent of an insanity plea.
On January. 29, Guzman did order Pinochet's house arrest, preliminary to his being forced to stand trial as "the author of the crimes of kidnapping and homicide" in the execution of the 75 prisoners.
Since the bodies of 58 of them have never been found, Guzman invented a new -legal theory: "Ongoing kidnap"-even though death certificates had been issued for almost all of them, even though autopsies were performed on some of the bodies, even though the supposed "kidnappings" occurred 27 years ago. That device enabled him to brush aside the amnesty law that had benefited far more leftists than military. It also enabled him to ignore such precepts as due process, double jeopardy and statutes of limitations.
The Supreme Court-even though it had reprimanded Guzman several times for discussing ongoing cases with the press and for other aberrations (including, at one point, ordering Pinochet arrested even before he had been questioned about the crimes he was alleged to have committed, even before the court-ordered medical examinations had been done)-refused to oust him from the case. By now, Guzman knew he would never make it to the Supreme Court himself, but he also was an "untouchable," a legal El Cid to internationalists.
On March 8, the Court of Appeals ruled that there was insufficient evidence to charge Pinochet with direct involvement in the executions-but he could still be tried for covering up those yet unproven crimes. A few days later, Guzman ordered his house arrest ended, releasing him on the equivalent of US$ 3,400 bail.
Pinochet is, at the moment, free. But, barely a week passes that Communist lawyers-or those working closely with them-don't file new charges against him. Their motive is vengeance, pure and simple, since even if he were found guilty, over and over again, he could never go to jail, because Chilean law prohibits jail for any prisoner over 75 years of age.
For a time, it seemed as though the weight of such a mountain of accusations, of the bitterness and acrimony, the endless sniping, had broken the spirit of the old man. Pain, there unquestionably was, and often-along with the physical suffering.
But, the man I saw in recent days was a man whose mind and spirit had somehow soared over this last battlefield in his life. A deeply religious man, he confides his future to God and, on this earth, not to lawyers or judges or politicians, but to historians.
Given the implacability of the left, the massiveness of their propaganda machine, their domination of the world political scene, it may be a very long while before anyone can view the reality of Pinochet with equanimity. He knows that and it confers a kind of immunity of its own. And of peace, as well.
BY JAMES R. WHELAN
Mr. Whelan is working on a biography of Pinochet, and recently interviewed him over a period of eight hours, in three separate sessions spaced over ten days. He has published six books, five of them on Latin America, and written and reported on the region for more than 40 years.
Copyright Human Events Publishing, Inc. Apr 2, 2001
So your point of view is that a democratically elected president can do whatever he wants? You do know that the Chilean congress and supreme court asked the military to intervene don't you?
There wouldn't have been any democratic process if Allende had been allowed to remain in power.
One man, one vote, one time and all that, don't you know?
Seems true to me. George Washington took power by arms right? Weren't the colonies under the rule of the King? And the things those colonial soldiers were carrying and shooting are known as "arms" aren't they? And I don't recall any elections under the laws of Great Britain happening to pass an initiative petition or law enabling the colonists to wage war against the King.
And it also seems true to me that the actions of George Washington and the other founding fathers of our nation "built a democracy".
I wouldn't put General Pinochet in the same class as the founders of our nation, but he sure did the right thing in turning around a real mess in Chile. There was plenty of leftist violence, terrorism and insurgency to deal with after he took power, something the leftists of the world never like to admit, and Pinochet had widespread public support for his actions at the time.
An ominous, powerful but also realistic thought.
As preposterous as it sounds, such a "solution" may someday actually be necessary here.
Imagine a liberal-controlled congress and presidency, that ignores the growing Islamist threat to The West and does nothing to stop it. Imagine a Republican/conservative minority that, because it _is_ a minority, lacks the political power and popular support to influence events.
And, further, imagine a successful attack in this country in which several cities are destroyed with weapons of mass destruction.
What would the liberal, democratic response actually _be_ under such circumstances?
How would an Al Gore, a Kerry, a Hillary Clinton or B. Hussein Obama respond?
Faced with literal chaos in the streets, with the order and influence of the United States crumbling along with its economy in the aftermath of such an attack, and faced with a "pitiful, helpless" liberal government, I think it would be realistic to expect that the only faction of strength _left_ in the country - the military - might have to begin considering its options.
Like "Seven Days in May" writ large...
- John
You might read "The Myth of the Great War" by John Mosier, for a contrarian view. It was the American Army under Pershing, not the British or French that defeated the Germans. The Germans broke the British at the Somme, not the other way around per Mosier. The German losses were far less than the French or British per Mosier's analysis - if I remember correctly, it was two British to one German.
Spain did not become communist because of Franco.
And not a very good one either, in my opinion. Hopefully other writers have better stuff in the works.
You ignore the fact that you can elect Republicans and you can vote out Republicans. You can elect Democrats and you can vote out Democrats. But when Communists are elected, you can't vote them out after they have consolidated power. Pinochet did what he had to do in Chile. The real question now is who will do Pinochet's job in Venezuela with Hugo Chavez? Someone has to get rid of the nutter Chavez.
Bump for later reading.
A significant difference was that the British losses were New Army men. The German losses were well trained long service reservists. Germany was never able to replace their men.
The Somme first, with its artillery barrage, ended the German offensive at Verdun. That saved the French Army.
The withdrawal to the Hindenberg line: So is it your opinion that Germany withdrew because they had broken the British Army? Falkenhayne: was he promoted after the Somme, or banished to the near east? What do you usually do with victorious generals? What do you usually do with losers?
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