ARGENTINA: Former Argentine dictator Gen Leopoldo Galtieri died yesterday in Buenos Aires, aged 76. He is best known for his failed invasion of the Falkland Islands in 1982, which started a war with Britain and ended military rule.
Gen Galtieri was being treated for pancreatic cancer and vascular complications. 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 1976-83 military rule, Gen Galtieri ordered the Falklands invasion to bolster his 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.
Among the general's miscalculations was the assumption the US would remain neutral if Britain and Argentina went to war.
Gen 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" counter-revolutionaries to fight the Nicaraguan Sandinista regime.
His leadership of the Falklands operation was marked by a lack of co-ordination 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.
Gen Galtieri took office in December 1981, and resigned June 17th, 1982, just days after Argentina's surrender to British forces in the Falklands.
He was jailed in 1986 on charges of incompetence for his role in the war, but pardoned in 1989 by then-president Carlos Menem.
Last July Gen Galtieri was placed under house arrest on charges related to the abductions and presumed killing of 19 members of the left-wing Montoneros movement when he was a regional commander during the dictatorship years.
Nineteen Montoneros - a faction of the Justicialist (Peronist) Party currently in power - were abducted in 1980 after they returned to Argentina from exile to launch a "strategic counter-offensive" against the 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 expressed little sympathy for Galtieri's death yesterday.
"Galtieri died without telling us where they hid the bodies of our children," said Ms Laura Bonaparte, one of the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo, a human rights group organised during the dictatorship.
Ms 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 at the government's current economic policies, described Gen Galtieri as "one of Argentina's most nefarious dictators"." Mr D'Elia blamed him 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.
Mr Fermin Chavez, a historian who specialises 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 Gen Galtieri "was not prepared to say 'no' but rather to obey".
Mr Chavez added that all of Argentina's military officers were tarnished with rights violations during the dictatorship years. - (AFP)