Latin America
Related: About this forumReagan and Argentina’s Dirty War
Reagan and Argentinas Dirty War
May 17, 2013
Exclusive: The 87-year-old ex-Argentine dictator Jorge Videla died Friday in prison where he was serving sentences for grotesque human rights crimes in the 1970s and 1980s. But one of Videlas key backers, the late President Ronald Reagan, continues to be honored by Americans, writes Robert Parry.
By Robert Parry
~snip~
The leaders of the Argentine junta also saw themselves as pioneers in the techniques of torture and psychological operations, sharing their lessons with other regional dictatorships. Indeed, the chilling word disappeared was coined in recognition of their novel tactic of abducting dissidents off the streets, torturing them and then murdering them in secret sometimes accomplishing the task by chaining naked detainees together and pushing them from planes over the Atlantic Ocean.
With such clandestine methods, the dictatorship could leave the families in doubt while deflecting international criticism by suggesting that the disappeared might have traveled to faraway lands to live in luxury, thus combining abject terror with clever propaganda and disinformation.
To pull off the trick, however, required collaborators in the U.S. news media who would defend the junta and heap ridicule on anyone who alleged that the thousands upon thousands of disappeared were actually being systematically murdered. One such ally was Ronald Reagan, who used his platform as a newspaper and radio commentator in the late 1970s to minimize the human rights crimes underway in Argentina and to counter the Carter administrations human rights protests.
~snip~
After defeating President Carter in Election 1980 and becoming President in January 1981, Reagan entered into a covert alliance with the Argentine junta. He ordered the CIA to collaborate with Argentinas Dirty War experts in training the Contras, who were soon rampaging through towns in northern Nicaragua, raping women and dragging local officials into public squares for executions. Some Contras also went to work in the cocaine-smuggling business. [See Robert Parrys Lost History.]
Much as he served as a pitch man for the Argentine junta, Reagan also deflected allegations of human rights violations by the Contras and various right-wing regimes in Central America, including Guatemala where another military junta was engaging in genocide against Mayan villages.
More:
http://consortiumnews.com/2013/05/17/reagan-and-argentinas-dirty-war/
WCGreen
(45,558 posts)It's amazing to see the nefarious brigade that is the GOP go gently into that night while we get blasted for what essentially is, not dotting I's or crossing the T's..
ocpagu
(1,954 posts)There was not a single monster he didn't support. And not only his contemporaries...
Reagan laying a wreath at a Waffen-SS cemetery.
Thanks for the article.
Judi Lynn
(160,621 posts)They really were the kind of people he would have loved, and those still among us who are just like him. One big creepy family.
Thanks.
naaman fletcher
(7,362 posts)I can't think of one decent guy he supported overseas.
At least George W Bush can always think back on his African AIDS initiatives as an example (perhaps the only one) of something good he did.