In a letter to Chileans written to be published after his death, Gen. Augusto Pinochet said he wished he hadn’t had to stage the bloody 1973 coup that put him in power and called the abuses during his long rule inevitable…
The former dictator, who died Dec. 10 of heart failure at age 91, insisted that the military takeover avoided civil war and a Marxist dictatorship, and said his 1973-90 rule never had “an institutional plan” to abuse human rights.
“But it was necessary to act with maximum rigor to avoid a widening of the conflict,” Pinochet wrote…
“How I wish the Sept. 11, 1973, military action had not been necessary!” Pinochet wrote.
“Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants, it is the creed of slaves.”
—William Pitt, House of Commons, November 18, 1783