Having lived and worked in Chile a number of years, I am amused at some of the comments below that assume the United States was responsible for the planning and execution of General Pinochet's 1973 coup.

One of the Left's enduring myths is that the United States was behind the planning and execution of General Augusto Pinochet's 1973 coup in Chile that overthrew the government of Salvador Allende. As was brought out in Senator Frank Church's 1975 Senate hearings on the CIA's intelligence activities, the CIA did provide $8 million over a three-year period to various opposition groups in Chile to keep them going, including labor unions, the anti-Allende newspaper El Mercurio (which Allende was attempting to shut down by having the nationalized banks withhold credit for newsprint), and others. Nevertheless, the U.S. provided neither funding nor assistance in the planning and execution of the coup itself. Although Embassy officials had evidence that something was afoot, they were not privy to the timing and actual plan itself.

Anyone who has served in Chile and studied the 1973 coup would find it laughable to hear someone insist that the Chilean military would need assistance from the U.S. The Chilean military was based on the Prussian model, was (and is) a very professional military, and was perfectly capable of planning and executing the coup on its own.

That the United States was glad to see Allende overthrown is undeniable. It does not follow, however, that the United States engineered the action that led to his overthrow. The Left's narrative of U.S. involvement in General Pinochet's coup in Chile, is one more example of the mental and ideological prison in which it dwells.

:matt-jokerfied: SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP