AP: Obama declines to apologize for CIA role in Chile

[JudyInTheHeartland]

WASHINGTON (AP) -- President Barack Obama says he wants a U.S. foreign policy that looks forward, not backward. Especially if it includes talking about the CIA's role in Latin and South America.

During a photo opportunity in the Oval Office on Tuesday, a reporter asked Obama if he cared to apologize for CIA interference in Chilean elections. Obama declined, saying he wants to focus on a partnership with Latin and South American countries.

Obama says cooperation with Chile, for instance, would help the United States fight the spread of flu. It is currently flu season there and they are fighting a strain that is going to be a major U.S. threat in a few months.

Obama says the United States can learn from how Chile responds.

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_OBAMA_CIA?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2009-06-23-15-59-54

[lamp_shade]

1. I wonder who asked the question.

[billyoc]

2. Q. Why are there no military coups in the United States?

A. Because there's no American embassy there. -- Michele Bachelet, President of Chile

[dipsydoodle]

8. Very droll

quite apart from being an astute comment.

[billyoc]

14. I like that the joke was made by a President of Chile, who's father was tortured to death

by the American backed Pinochet junta, to a group of reporters at San Fransisco airport. :)

[elocs]

3. The list of things for which Obama could apologize, needed or not, must be quite long.

Obama needs to read DU because it would save him the trouble of having to consider what decisions to make for all knowledge and wisdom resides on these pages. At least that is what DUers believe. I know I do. :bounce:

[alcibiades_mystery]

4. Z Magazine will publish a strongly worded editorial

Did people think they were electing Noam Chomsky or something?

:rofl:

[pnorman]

11. I've been a Z subscriber for many years, and am still an occasional reader.

I also hold Noam Chomsky in fairly high regard. Moreover, I hold very strong and emotional feelings about that CIA coup in Chile, as well as other places. But I'm still putting my faith on Obama to say & do the right thing, and at the right time and place.

That he made specific reference to that 1953 CIA coup in Iran in his Cairo speech, gives me all the assurance that I need. IMO: It came at just the right to influence the elections in Lebanon. In all likelihood, it has had the same effect in Iran.

pnorman

[WI_DEM]

5. Good Grief.

[vaberella]

6. Colin Powell Apologized for that years ago.

Need we go into that again.

[dipsydoodle]

7. Maybe he needs to wait until

Kissmyarsenger is no more, has ceased to be, gone to meet 'is maker , is pushing up the daisys....

Just out of politeness you understand :sarcasm:

And a reminder :

1970 - In September, following Salvador Allende's victory in the Chilean presidential vote, United States President Richard M. Nixon orders the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) to do all it can to prevent Allende from being inaugurated.

Under the supervision of national security adviser Henry Kissinger the CIA will develop the so-called 'Track II' plan to oust Allende, allocating US$10 million while formally insulating the US embassy in Chile from any involvement.

The CIA attempts to bribe key Chilean legislators and funds a group of military officers plotting a coup, providing a further payment of US$35,000 following the assassination on 22 October of General Rene Schneider, the commander-in-chief of the army, who had refused to approve the coup plan.

One CIA document from October states, "It is firm and continuing policy that Allende be overthrown by a coup. ... It is imperative that these actions be implemented clandestinely and securely so that the USG (US Government) and American hand be well hidden."

http://www.moreorless.au.com/killers/pinochet.html

Odd isn't it. It's always the transgressors who say " we need to look forward" - never those who have suffered.

BTW - when last reported there was a warrant out for Kissmyaresenger's arrest in Paris for failure to show at a trial concerning involvement in the death of General Rene Schneider.

[Cha]

9. They better be asking who ever was

in charge at the time..It's not Pres Obama's place to be apologizing for them right now.

[masuki bance]

10. He expressed regret for the actions in Iran in 1953. nt

[Beacool]

12. Let me get this straight, he goes to Europe & Cairo and emits apologies all around.

But Chile does not deserve an apology for what the US did there and elsewhere in Latin America. Thousands of people were killed in Chile, Argentina, Paraguay, etc. by military juntas which were financed and trained by the USA. Plus all those who were tortured and raped. How many young women who were pregnant at the time had their babies taken away from them? Ever talk to a woman who was repeatedly raped and tortured with a cattle prod? There's no amount of apology that this country can give to return to these people the lives they had before the military took over.

Michelle Bachelet and her mother were victims of torture. But I guess that we should all move along, nothing to see here. Let's just talk about the flu........

Torture and exile

Facing growing food shortages, the government of Salvador Allende placed Bachelet's father in charge of the Food Distribution Office. When Augusto Pinochet came to power in the September 11, 1973 coup, General Bachelet, refusing exile, was detained at the Air War Academy, under charges of treason. Following months of daily torture at Santiago's Public Prison, on March 12, 1974, he suffered a cardiac arrest that resulted in his death. On January 10, 1975, Bachelet and her mother were detained at their apartment by two DINA agents, who blindfolded them and drove them to Villa Grimaldi, a notorious secret detention center in Santiago, where they were separated and submitted to interrogation and torture.<12> Some days later they were transferred to Cuatro Álamos ("Four Poplars") detention center, where they were held until the end of January. Later in 1975, due to sympathetic connections in the military, both were exiled to Australia, where Bachelet's older brother Alberto had moved in 1969.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michelle_Bachelet

:puke:

[Hippo_Tron]

13. Perhaps it was the way the question was worded?

Obama didn't apologize for the Mossadeq coup in his Cairo speech. He acknowledged it and said that it had put a strain on US-Iranian relations.