Dean,

I would have never even read Counterpunch if one of my newsfeeds on Cuba had not carried the guy's article. But the minute I started reading it, that Cuban hothead in me just wanted to explode. I simply had to give the guy a piece of my mind. Of course, his response email made me laugh more than anger, but again, I just could not help but respond.

You are right though, Dean, the world really is full of a**holes.

Hey, better that Val should respond than leave the guy to peddle his delusions unaccosted.

Yeah sure. The only alternative you had to replace a DEMOCRATICALLY elected government in Chile (cause Allende, like it or not was elected fair an square) was passing a coup d´etat and putting a bloody dictatorship to replace it. Your whole nonsense about Chile being taken by communists, simple doesn’t hold water: Allende was a socialist, not a communist - communists don’t believe in democratic process to start- (why did you not try coup d´état in Europe, where many democratic socialist governments were elected to? Simple answer: Europe is not your colonial feud as Latin America is).
I also suppose that the alternative to Nicaraguan revolution - that was far more than legitimate against the brutish dictator you supported prior to the Sandinistas take over of power- was great. Founding death squads that commit terrorists acts against civilian population.
Maybe all the revolutions in Latin America happened to Marxist, since the Soviet Union was the only power that realistically opposed the US imperial power here. If you weren’t supporting all sorts of brutish dictatorships to preserve your own interests, maybe neither Cuban nor Nicraguan revolutions will have turned Marxists.

Sergio,

Allende got 36% of the vote. Christian Democrats had 32. They formed a coalition with him instead of going back to the polls. They did it on the agreement that he'd have limited executive powers. He didn't even have control of the military as part of the deal. He absolutely had no mandate to do what he did to that country. He stole and pillaged the Chilean public. The only person responsible for Pinochet is Allende himself.

Yeah, we replaced a democratically elected government with a brutal dictator in a violent coup, but we had to! And it's OK because once he was installed, we did a lot of URGING to get him to stop violating human rights.

I judge him by his enemies:

From the Associated Press:

"HAVANA - Cuba harshly criticized former President Ronald Reagan and his policies on Monday, saying he should "never have been born.'' In the first reaction to Reagan's death from the communist government, Radio Reloj said: "As forgetful and irresponsible as he was, he forgot to take his worst works to the grave,'' the government radio station said. "He, who never should have been born, has died,'' the radio said."

Sergio :

Your whitewashing of Allende as merely a "socialist" does not hold water. It has already been proven that he was in close alliance with Cuba, North Korea, and the Soviets, who were busy helping him engineer a coup.

Even the former Soviet government admits this now. Why can't you? Is it because you've been lied to and still haven't realized it yet?

As for Nicaragua: Ortega was a brutal mass-murderer and a tyrant. He was as bad or worse than Somosa ever was, and as soon as the people of Nicaragua had a chance to get rid of him by free elections, they threw his mass-murdering, torturing, tyrant ass out the door. And now, Nicaragua has free elections, free speech, and free press thanks to the Contras.

If, like me, you supported the Sandinistas, I hope that also, like me, you are ashamed of that, because you should be.

Eva: I'm glad you understand the basics, which were, as you so well acknowlege:

1) Allow a Communist who was "elected" with barely a third of the vote, who was busy dismantling his nation's Constitution, intentionally provoking a civil war, taking money and arms from the international Communist network including Castro, North Korea, and the Soviet Union to destroy the country and take it over just like the international Communist movement had done in Cuba, in North Korea, in Vietnam, in Czechoslovakia, in Hungary, in Estonia, in Latvia, very nearly in Finland, and so on, or,

2) Support a coup by a not-too-savory character who would at least prevent the nation from falling to communism as so many others had.

We did the right thing, and as an undeniable result, Chile is a free, democratic state with free speech, free press, and free elections.

Those are the facts. You do with them what you will, but I note that Allende held his promised elections within less than two decades of taking power, whereas we're at four-plus decades in Cuba and the brutal mass-murdering tyrant Castro--whose body count is an order of magnitude higher than Pinochet's by the way--is still in power.

Score one for the USA and for human freedom. International relations aren't always ideal, but you work with what you have and not what you always want.

I have no tolerance for any dictators, but Franco and Salazar were continually condemned by the Left, while Stalin, Kruschev, Brezhnev, Mao, Castro, etc., were tolerated and even adulated.

There's also the fact that Franco and Salzar killed a fraction of the people Stalin and Mao did,and due to free market economic policies,Spain and Portugal both eventually democratized.I'm personally of the opinion that history will end up viewing Franco kinder than it does so now.

Strider:

Exactly right. I have also read that Franco gave asylum to Spanish Jews during the Holocaust. The hypocrisy of the Left is blinding.

"why are you even bothering to debate this cretin from Counterpunch.org?"

because he wants to punch him in the face, but that wouldn't be legal:)