sooner or later, the secrets start to come out. no matter how much you believe in your realpolitik games, the ends do not justify the means. it still matters how you play the game, and a dirty win isn't much of a victory at all:
At the height of the Argentine military junta's bloody ''dirty war'' against leftists in the 1970s, then-Secretary of State Henry Kissinger told the Argentine foreign minister that ''we would like you to succeed,'' a newly declassified U.S. document reveals.The transcript of the meeting between Kissinger and Navy Adm. César Augusto Guzzetti in New York on Oct. 7, 1976, is the first documentary evidence that the Gerald Ford administration approved of the junta's harsh tactics, which led to the deaths or ''disappearance'' of some 30,000 people from 1975 to 1983.
The document is also certain to further complicate Kissinger's legacy, which has been questioned in recent years as new evidence has emerged on his connection to human-rights violations around the world -- including in Chile, Indonesia and Bangladesh.
hopefully some of those complications will involve a trial. but i guess back in the seventies, with bellbottoms, led zeppelin, disco, and domino theories still in effect, it's okay to allow people to 'disappear' when you're fighting the red menace.
''Look, our basic attitude is that we would like you to succeed,'' Kissinger reassured Guzzetti in the seven-page transcript, marked SECRET. ``I have an old-fashioned view that friends ought to be supported. What is not understood in the United States is that you have a civil war. We read about human rights problems but not the context. The quicker you succeed, the better.''
so it's only a human rights problem based on the context. oh, okay. gotcha, henry. i really can't top that.
and this is the guy bush wanted to run the 9/11 investigation? christ.
Posted by kilgore at December 4, 2003 09:28 PM | TrackBack