[SOAinthenews] Argentine ex-dictator dead

[Joseph Catron]

Buenos Aires, Jan 12

Former dictator General Leopoldo Galtieri, who died Sunday, is best known
for his failed invasion of the Falkland Islands in 1982 kicking off a war
with Britain and resulting in the end of military rule.

Galtieri died in the Central Military Hospital where he was being treated
for pancreatic cancer and vascular complications, said Lieutenant Colonel
Alicia Amato, a hospital official. He was 76.

Tall, blue-eyed and handsome, then-US president Ronald Reagan nicknamed
him the "majestic general," he often held office hours with a glass of
whiskey in his hand.

One of several dictators during Argentina's 1976-1983 military rule,
Galtieri ordered the Falklands invasion to bolster Argentina's flagging
dictatorship.

Instead it led to a disastrous 74-day war that resulted in the deaths of
652 Argentine and 255 British soldiers, a humiliating defeat that turned
Argentina against the military and hastened the restoration of democracy
here.

Among Galtieri's miscalculations was the assumption the United States
would remain neutral if Britain and Argentina went to war.

Galtieri, a 1949 graduate of the US School of the Americas, infamous for
its many alumni linked to human-rights violations, believed Washington was
in his debt for his role in training "contra" guerrillas to fight the
leftist Nicaraguan Sandinista regime.

His leadership of the Falklands operation was marked by a lack of
coordination among the army, navy and air force; a flurry of presidential
directives duplicating orders already issued by field commanders; and a
woeful lack of preparation among Argentine soldiers.

Galtieri took office in December 1981, and resigned June 17, 1982, just
days after Argentina's humiliating surrender to British forces in the
Falklands.

He was jailed in 1986 on charges of incompetence for his role in the war,
but later pardoned in 1989 by then-president Carlos Menem.

Then in July 2002 Galtieri was arrested and placed under house arrest on
charges related to the abductions and presumed killings of 19 leftist
members of the Montoneros movement when he was a regional commander during
the dictatorship years.

Nineteen Montoneros, a leftist faction of the Justicialist (Peronist)Party
currently in power, were abducted in 1980 after they returned to Argentina
from exile to launch a "strategic counteroffensive" against the right-wing
military dictatorship.

The military dictatorship is blamed for the abductions and presumed deaths
of between 11,000 and 30,000 people during what has become known as the
"dirty war" against political opponents.

Argentines on Sunday expressed little sympathy for Galtieri's death.

"Galtieri died without telling us where they hid the bodies of our
children," said Laura Bonaparte, one of the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo,
a rights group organized during the dictatorship.

Bonaparte is still seeking information on the whereabouts of her husband
and three sons, as well as three other relatives, who vanished during the
dictatorship years.

Luis D'Elia, a leader in groups protesting the government's current
economic policies, described Galtieri as "one of Argentina's most
nefarious dictators."

D'Elia blamed Galtieri for "double genocide" for his role in the military
regime and for his role in the Falklands debacle, where hundreds of young,
ill-trained and ill-equipped draftees were defeated by professional
British soldiers.

Fermin Chavez, a historian who specializes on the dictatorship period,
described Galtieri as a rigid military disciplinarian who was "a victim of
his circumstances" and unable to think beyond his military training.

Throughout his career Galtieri "was not prepared to say 'no' but rather to
obey," Chavez said.

Chavez added that all of Argentina's military officers were tarnished with
rights violations during the dictatorship years.

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