Tuesday, December 23, 2003

Not Neo-Con, Just Plain Greed: "Mr. Kissinger instructs the [Argentine] minister, 'Proceed with your Export-Import Bank requests. We would like your economic program to succeed and will do our best to help you.' The World Bank estimates that roughly $10-billion of the money borrowed by the generals went to military purchases, used to build the prison camps from which thousands never re-emerged, and to buy hardware for the Falklands War. It also went into numbered Swiss bank accounts, a sum impossible to track because the generals destroyed all records relating to the loans on their way out the door.

"We do know this: Under the dictatorship, Argentina's external debt ballooned from $7.7-billion in 1975 to $46-billion in 1982. Ever since, the country has been caught in an escalating crisis, borrowing billions to pay interest on that original, illegitimate debt, which today is only slightly higher than that held by Iraq's foreign creditors: $141-billion. The Kissinger transcript proves that the U.S. knowingly gave both money and high-level political encouragement to the generals' murderous campaign. Yet despite its irrefutable complicity in Argentina's tragedy, the United States has consistently opposed all attempts to cancel the country's debt."

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