BuzzFlash Reviews

June 2005

The Condor Years by John Dinges

BUZZFLASH REVIEWS

One reviewer calls "Dinges's meticulously documented study is a cautionary tale for today's war on terror-which shares a major anniversary with the 1973 Chilean coup that brought Pinochet to power: September 11."

BuzzFlash calls this 332-page report, by a veteran American journalist who has extensively covered South America, something else: totally chilling.

As is the case with the Bush Administration today, Operation Condor, in which six allied governments in South America engaged in the kidnapping, murder, and assassination of more than 30,000 people (including dropping some of them drugged from planes to die in the ocean and giving the children of murdered mothers to military families to raise), Kissinger publicly supported democracies, while privately aiding and condoning the terrorist campaign of Operation Condor.

Pinochet is the most visible symbol of Operation Condor, but it was a coordinated assault on pro-democracy supporters across most of South America. This was government terrorism conducted by dictators who claimed they were fighting terrorism. But Pinochet came to power in a coup against a democratically-elected government, a coup green lighted by Kissinger, as were the ultimate murders of Allende supporters and unionists. Americans were among the victims, including Ronni Moffit, who was blown to bits in a car as she was traveling in Washington D.C. with a Chilean exile, Orlando Letelier.

The torture, assassinations, murder and brutality that the dictatorships involved in Operation Condor engaged in remind us of the gulag or torture and interrogation sites set up by the Bush Administration, as well as their ongoing "rendering" of "suspects" to nations that can engage in torture without any prying eyes. But, moreover, they are a foreshadowing of what could happen in the U.S. if Bush continues to be given executive branch police powers that violate the Constitution.

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