Kissinger Comments Seen As OK for Abuse

[Khephra]

WASHINGTON -- While Argentina's military junta was suppressing dissidents in 1976, Secretary of State Henry Kissinger told the country's foreign minister, "If there are things that have to be done, you should do them quickly," according to a newly declassified document.

The conversation left Argentine generals with the belief that Kissinger gave them "a carte blanche for the dirty war," said Carlos Osorio of the National Security Archives. The foreign policy research center obtained the documents that were being released Friday.

But a former State Department official who attended Kissinger's meeting in June 1976 with Argentina's foreign minister, Adm. Cesar Augusto Guzzetti, said that view was "a distortion of history."

"It's a canard," said William D. Rogers, vice chair of Kissinger's lobbying firm, Kissinger Associates. "The idea that he would tell another country to violate human rights quickly or slowly or under any circumstances is preposterous."

http://www.newsday.com/news/politics/wire/sns-ap-kissinger-argentina,0,3993614.story?coll=sns-ap-politics-headlines

[lil-petunia]

1. if there was one man who needs some serious prison time,

after Cheney, wolfie, ashcroft and Perle, it would be Kissinger.

[burythehatchet]

2. Kissinger's hell is his conscience

But it would be nice to see him in shackles though.

[nothingshocksmeanymore]

7. It would be nice to see him die a slow painful death like the ones

he has justified for so many other human beings to die.

[BootinUp]

3. They understood correctly

Kissinger never saw a human rights violation that he can't justify.

[zmdem]

13. Interesting that you should mention it

Isn't that a picture of Gen. Wesley Clark, the mastermind of the war from 30,000 feet against Serbia ? Heaven forbid we should risk a single American life. The Serb civilian population, well who really cares anyway ?

[nothingshocksmeanymore]

4. Preposterous? He did the same thing with Suharto

"wait til we leave to slaughter a quarter of a million people"

[G_j]

5. some other qotes from K

"The illegal we do immediately. The unconstitutional takes a little longer"

& a few more...

"I don't see why we need to stand by and watch a country go communist due to the irresponsibility of its people. The issues are much too important for the Chilean voters to be left to decide for themselves."

"Why should we flagellate ourselves for what the Cambodians did to each other?"

"Covert action should not be confused with missionary work." (Kissinger commenting on the U.S. sellout of the Kurds in Iraq in 1975)

[nothingshocksmeanymore]

6. and don't forget

"oil is much too precious a commodity to be left in the hands of the Arabs"

[nothingshocksmeanymore]

8. kick

[Pallas180]

9. I was just going to post something similar...Rogers is in it too huh

a whole cabal...Kissinger reps China, and is everywhere the oil is..
I wouldn't be surprised if we find him connected to the attempted
coup in Equatorial Guinea...

After all, Kissinger & Associates is based in London.





ai yi yi, chihuahua, this lil yappy doggy follows me wher'er I go.

[David Zephyr]

10. Henry Kissinger and Allen Dulles: America's Signature War Criminals.

Tell a friend.

[sattahipdeep]

11. Maybe....this grinch's heart transplant didn't take n/t

[struggle4progress]

12. PRESS RELEASE: ARGENTINE MILITARY BELIEVED U.S. GAVE GO-AHEAD ...

... FOR DIRTY WAR

<snip>
On 20 September 1976, Ambassador Robert Hill reported that Guzzetti said "When he had seen SECY of State Kissinger in Santiago, the latter had said he 'hoped the Argentine Govt could get the terrorist problem under control as quickly as possible.' Guzzetti said that he had reported this to President Videla and to the cabinet, and that their impression had been that the USG's overriding concern was not human rights but rather that GOA 'get it over quickly'."

After a second meeting between Kissinger and Guzzetti in Washington, on 19 October 1976, Ambassador Robert Hill wrote "a sour note" from Buenos Aires complaining that he could hardly carry human rights demarches if the Argentine Foreign Minister did not hear the same message from the Secretary of State. "Guzzetti went to U.S. fully expecting to hear some strong, firm, direct warnings on his government's human rights practices, rather than that, he has returned in a state of jubilation, convinced that there is no real problem with the USG over that issue," wrote Hill.

The U.S. Embassy also disagreed with the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence 19 July 1976 assessment that there was a "murderous three-cornered battle going on in Argentina amongst left-wing terrorists, government security personnel and right wing goon squads." On 23 July 1976, Deputy Chief of Mission Maxwell Chaplin cabled Washington that "The battle is a two-sided affair, not tri-cornered" since "the only 'right-wing assassins' operating in Argentina at this point, however, are members of the GOA security forces."

http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB73/index3.htm

Summaries of declassified documents with links to pdfs

<edit:> Looks to me like Rogers is blowing smoke out of his ***