The information they once promised to carry to their graves has become both a heavy psychological burden and a bargaining chip. By offering confessions, the former draftees hope to improve their chances of securing benefits from pensions to psychological treatment.<\/font><\/p>\n "We were executors and witnesses of many brutalities and now we’re willing to talk about them for our own personal redemption," said former soldier Fernando Mellado, who is organizing a Sunday gathering of draftees outside Chile’s presidential palace.<\/font><\/p>\n "So if there is any opportunity in which we can testify, maybe anonymously, then we’d be happy to oblige."<\/font><\/p>\n Mellado leads the Santiago chapter of the Former Soldiers of 1973 and has been working with similar groups across Chile to figure out whether and how to turn over the information. He is calling on draftees to tell what they know.<\/font><\/p>\n Of the 8,000 people drafted as teenagers from Santiago alone in the tumultuous year when Pinochet overthrew Salvador Allende’s government and cemented his hold on power, Mellado believes "between 20 and 30 percent are willing to talk."\u2026<\/font><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n Inserted from <Common Dreams<\/a>><\/p>\n Many of the officers who oversaw Pinochet\u2019s reign of terror received their training in torture and repression at the School of the America\u2019s at Fort Benning, GA. Sadly, Nixon, Kissinger and the GOP leaders responsible for these atrocities were never called to account for their crimes against humanity. But what if they had? Consider if you will the effects of holding them accountable back then. Because of this, Bush, Cheney and the GOP leaders responsible for the many crimes committed from 2001 \u2013 2008 might have had second thoughts, fearing that they might not get away with it either. Now keeping this in mind, doesn\u2019t our failure to prosecute Bush, Cheney and the GOP leaders virtually guarantee that, if ever the GOP retakes power, we will face this sad history again?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The destruction of the WTC was not the first terrorist attack to occur on 9\/11 and have thousands of innocent victims. On September 11, 1973, Augosto Pinochet, working in close concert with Richard Nixon, Henry Kissinger and the GOP, murdered the democratically elected President of Chile, Salvador Allende and kicked off a reign of terror […]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-211","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","category-5-id","post-seq-1","post-parity-odd","meta-position-corners","fix"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/211","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=211"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/211\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=211"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=211"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=211"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"chile_dirtywarsoldierstotalk\"](\"http:\/\/s217.photobucket.com\/albums\/cc83\/TomCat1948or2\/Blog%202009\/OldSoldiersWanttoConfessWarCrimes_1840\/chile_dirtywarsoldierstotalk.jpg\" "\\"chile_dirtywarsoldierstotalk\\"")
<\/a> Hundreds of former military draftees are making a provocative offer to Chile’s government: They will reveal details of crimes committed by Gen. Augusto Pinochet’s dictatorship \u2014 but only if their safety is guaranteed.The draftees fear that if they reveal where the bodies are buried, they will face prosecution by the courts or retaliation by the superiors who ordered them decades ago to torture and kill political prisoners.<\/font><\/p>\n