December 12, 2006


IMPEACH BUSH


IMPEACH CHENEY

THE BUSH-PINOCHET CONNECTION

Former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet died a few days ago. I don't think Pinochet has many mourners except some loons on the far right who consider a dictator a good guy if he advertises himself as anti-Communist. The United States helped inflict Pinochet on Chile by overthrowing the democratically-elected government of Salvador Allende. Pinochet proceeded to murder and torture for seventeen years. It's not surprising that the Bush family has connections to Pinochet. Robert Parry spells out the Bush-Pinochet connection in this article at www.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.

PINOCHET AND THE FREE MARKET

One reason Augusto Pinochet is a hero to right-wingers is that Pinochet implemented many of the crackpot free market ideas dear to right-wingers. Pinochet did things like abolish the minimum wage, privatize the pension system, and slash taxes on business. The consequences were a fiasco, and should be a warning to us. This article by Greg Palast is at www.smirkingchimp.com:

In 1973, the year General Pinochet brutally seized the government, Chile's unemployment rate was 4.3%. In 1983, after ten years of free-market modernization, unemployment reached 22%. Real wages declined by 40% under military rule.

In 1970, 20% of Chile's population lived in poverty. By 1990, the year "President" Pinochet left office, the number of destitute had doubled to 40%. Quite a miracle.

Pinochet did not destroy Chile's economy all alone. It took nine years of hard work by the most brilliant minds in world academia, a gaggle of Milton Friedman's trainees, the Chicago Boys. Under the spell of their theories, the General abolished the minimum wage, outlawed trade union bargaining rights, privatized the pension system, abolished all taxes on wealth and on business profits, slashed public employment, privatized 212 state industries and 66 banks and ran a fiscal surplus.