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<DIV><BR></DIV>The following article appered in the June 1, 2002, Mid-Hudson
Activist<BR>Newsletter, published in New Paltz, NY, by the Mid-Hudson
National<BR>People's Campaign,
IAC.<BR>-------------------------------------------------------<BR>HENRY
KISSINGER, WAR CRIMINAL<BR><BR>By Jack A. Smith<BR><BR>Former Secretary of State
Henry Kissinger's past political misdeeds are<BR>catching up to him at
last. Activists in London recently conducted a<BR>demonstration to protest
his presence at a meeting of corporate<BR>directors, calling him a criminal for
his conduct during the Vietnam<BR>war. Some human rights groups are trying
to have him arrested as a war<BR>criminal for his involvement in Washington's
war to dominate Vietnam,<BR>Cambodia and Laos. And the Spanish judge who
sought to indict former<BR>Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet, is now going after
Kissinger for his<BR>role in destroying democracy in Chile.<BR><BR>A degree of
pressure must be getting to the man who served as<BR>Machiavelli to Richard
Nixon's Prince. With the shouts of "war<BR>criminal" still ringing in his
ears from the demonstration outside<BR>London's Royal Albert Hall, Kissinger
told the corporate leaders<BR>assembled inside with exquisite abstraction that
"No one can say that he<BR>served in an administration that did not make
mistakes." This is the<BR>closest he ever came to acknowledging a remote
proximity to "mistakes"<BR>while serving as foreign policy guru. One
can easily imagine the<BR>78-year-old master of the geopolitical game cynically
chuckling to<BR>himself over such a self-serving admission, while Poor Richard
must<BR>still be revolving in his grave, envying and hating Kissinger for
being<BR>so cleverly outrageous, and getting away with it time and
again.<BR><BR>Reuters news agency asked the Vietnamese Foreign Ministry in Hanoi
to<BR>comment on the London protest and moves in some countries to
bring<BR>Kissinger to trial for war crimes, and received this reply: "We
hold<BR>that as a key official who played an important role at the time
the<BR>United States was carrying out its invasive war in Vietnam,
Mr.<BR>Kissinger has to take responsibility for the sufferings and
losses<BR>brought by this war upon the Vietnamese people." (Over 2
million<BR>Vietnamese died in the conflict, as did 58,209 U.S. GIs.)<BR><BR>Of
course Kissinger is a criminal. Here's one instance, as we wrote in<BR>a
pamphlet ("Enough is Enough -- 100 Years of U.S. intervention in
Latin<BR>America and the Caribbean") published a couple of years ago: "As
a<BR>result of the 1970 elections [in Chile] a genuine leftist reformer
was<BR>sitting at the very center of government in the continent's
most<BR>democratic country. Dr. Salvador Allende Gossens, the candidate of
the<BR>Popular Unity coalition of progressives, socialists, and
communists,<BR>gained office with a plurality of the vote and began to assemble
a<BR>coalition government. In the months leading up to the elections,
the<BR>CIA had intervened feverishly with money and other forms of support
to<BR>assure the victory of the ultra-rightist candidate. The U.S.
first<BR>tried to rig the elections, then to bribe members of the
Chilean<BR>Congress to have them refuse to confirm Allende in office, and, if
all<BR>else failed, to begin the process of fomenting a military
coup.<BR>Investigative reporter Seymour M. Hersh in his informational book,
'The<BR>Price of Power,' quotes Kissinger as saying at the June 27, 1970,
secret<BR>meeting [in Washington] where these plans were approved: 'I don't
see<BR>why we need to stand by and watch a country go Communist due to
the<BR>irresponsibility of its own people.'"<BR><BR>So much for democracy.
Allende was overthrown and killed in 1973, along<BR>with many thousands of
Chilean progressives and democrats. Thousands<BR>more were tortured and
imprisoned. Pinochet's right-wing authoritarian<BR>regime ruled for
decades with U.S. backing, thanks to Kissinger and his<BR>successors. Visiting
Chile in 1998, soon after the elderly dictator<BR>retired, President Bill
Clinton surpassed routine White House hypocrisy<BR>by delivering a moving speech
about how pleased was Washington that<BR>Chile finally restored
democracy. We mention this because concealed<BR>behind its excessive
penchant for the rhetoric of human rights,<BR>Washington is perpetrating the
same duplicitous deeds today as<BR>yesterday. Fixing
elections? How about Yugoslavia in 2000? <BR>Overthrowing democratic
governments? How about Venezuela in 2002<BR>(though a U.S.-backed coup was
foiled this time)? <BR><BR>Meanwhile, we've got a war on terrorism
to keep the Pentagon occupied<BR>today and a government to topple in Iraq
tomorrow. Who needs a<BR>Kissinger or a Nixon when there's a George
Bush, Dick Cheney, Colin<BR>Powell and Donald Rumsfeld -- criminals all, in our
view -- occupying<BR>the War Room? Still, it would be appropriate for the
man who served as<BR>the model for Dr. Strangelove to finally be obliged to sit
in humanity's<BR>courtroom and explain, no doubt patiently and professorially,
why the<BR>survival of freedom, democracy and the American Way of Life required
the<BR>carpet-bombing slaughter of poor peasants in Indochina's rice
paddies.<BR></BODY></HTML>