Tales From the Crypt: Pinochet, the Bushes and Fake Miracles

Tuesday, 12 December 2006

As Robert Parry reports, one of the Bush Family's most faithful minions – Death – has stepped in once again, James Baker-like, to pull the clan's criminal fat out of the potential fire. Parry, one of the great chroniclers of the "Lost History" of our times, has the story here: Pinochet's Death Spares the Bush Family. Some excerpts are below, but you should read the whole piece. As always with Parry, it's an education:

(From Consortiumnews.com)Gen. Augusto Pinochet’s death on Dec. 10 means the Bush Family can breathe a little bit easier, knowing that criminal proceedings against Chile’s notorious dictator can no longer implicate his longtime friend and protector, former President George H.W. Bush.

Although Chilean investigations against other defendants may continue, the cases against Pinochet end with his death of a heart attack at the age of 91. Pinochet’s death from natural causes also marks a victory for world leaders, including George H.W. and George W. Bush, who shielded Pinochet from justice over the past three decades.

The Bush Family’s role in the Pinochet cover-up began in 1976 when then-CIA Director George H.W. Bush diverted investigators away from Pinochet’s guilt in a car bombing in Washington that killed political rival Orlando Letelier and an American, Ronni Moffitt. The cover-up stretched into the presidency of George W. Bush when he sidetracked an FBI recommendation to indict Pinochet in the Letelier-Moffitt murders. Over those intervening 30 years, Pinochet allegedly engaged in a variety of illicit operations, including terrorism, torture, murder, drug trafficking, money-laundering and illicit arms shipments – sometimes with the official collusion of the U.S. government.

In the 1980s, when George H.W. Bush was Vice President, Pinochet’s regime helped funnel weapons to the Nicaraguan contra rebels and to Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, an operation that also implicated then-CIA official Robert M. Gates, who will be the next U.S. Secretary of Defense.

Meanwhile, another of our stalwart chroniclers of hidden reality, Greg Palast, gives us the lowdown on the fairy-tale "Chilean Miracle" being touted once more in the obits of the much-unlamented dictator. For many on the American Right – and some in the mushy Center – Pinochet might have been a tough ole hombre, but at least he "made the trains run on time," as the saying goes; in this case, being credited with reviving Chile's catastrophic economy and building it into a powerhouse. As Palast shows, Pinochet's chief role in this "miracle" was embracing the socialist policies of the predecessor he had murdered, Salvador Allende, and promulgating them with a ruthlessness that Allende never approached. >>>cont

Chris Floyd