What did hell do to deserve this one?

Controversial. Mixed. Repressive.

You wouldn't think those words applied to a genocidal dictator who tortured and killed thousands, would you? They're a little weak, no?

Much better, if tongue-in-cheek, is a headline from an Argentine paper: "What did Hell do to deserve this one?"

It just galls me that news stories and headlines have described the former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet so blandly. Only the independent publications have ventured to interview spouses and family members of several people he ordered tortured and murdered. And mind you, our own government helped him get to power, and according to documents declassified by the Clinton administration, helped him get a hold of several of his "enemies" who he later had murdered.

Sick, sick, sick chapter of our history - which Henry Kissinger, by the way, defended on a news show as recently as 2001.

Bad enough that Pinochet was never brought to justice; bad enough that thousands of his supporters (supporters! Who supports a genocidal dictator?) are pissed that the current president of Chile, whose father was tortured to death by Pinochet - and herself was a victim of torture in one of his detention centers - isn't giving him a state funeral.

Boo fucking hoo!

What a sick, sorry place this world is when we can't call a murderer for what he is. Or, for that matter, give him his.

It's like Eddie Izzard says in his stand up routine: kill one person and you go to jail. Kill several people and they put you in a mental hospital. Kill thousands of people in a foreign country, and
it's almost like the world says - Well done!

How fitting he died on Dec. 10, which is International Human Rights Day.

I'm sorry he didn't spend his final years rotting in jail.