Trail of blood leads back to Kissinger

THE newly-declassified document (Irish Examiner, August 28) that shows Henry Kissinger telling Argentina’s Foreign Minister “if there are things that have to be done, you should do them quickly”, just before the campaign against dissidents in 1976, should come as no great surprise.

The US-approved military rulers and the US-backed military slaughtered at least 30,000 civilians between 1976 and 1983.

When Richard Nixon entered the White House in January 1969, Henry Kissinger became his National Security Adviser. Together, they escalated the Vietnam War which left up to three million Vietnamese dead. Another 600,000 Cambodians were killed and 350,000 Laotians were also slaughtered.

Even before the Vietnam War ended in April 1975, Kissinger was secretly intervening in another distant country.

Angola was in a civil war which began when the US-funded FNLA guerrillas attacked and killed members of a rival movement. The CIA’s director of covert operations in Angola at the time, John Stockwell, recalled how Kissinger “had overruled his advisers and refused to seek diplomatic solutions” and had “ordered us (the CIA) to seek every means to escalate the Angolan conflict”.

When the guns fell silent, around one million Angolans were dead. Can anyone explain how Kissinger was the joint recipient of the Nobel Peace prize in 1973? The other recipient was a Vietnamese, Le Duc Tho, who declined the prize on the grounds that his country was still not at peace.

Sean Buttimer Jnr

Knocknamadree

Ballyhooly

Co Cork