Operation "Wagon Train" Sorts People By Skin Color

From the Salt Lake Tribune, this article describing how ICE agents acted when they raided the Swift Plant in Hyrum, Utah as part of ICE's "Operation Wagon Train" Raid on suspected undocumented workers:

"If only for a few minutes, Maria felt like an ''illegal alien'' in her homeland - the United States of America. She thought she was going on break from her job at the Swift & Co. meat processing plant here on Tuesday, but instead she and others were forced to stand in a line by U.S. immigration agents. Non-Latinos and people with lighter skin were plucked out of line and given blue bracelets. The rest, mostly Latinos with brown skin, waited until they were ''cleared'' or arrested by ''la migra,'' the popular name in Spanish for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), employees said."

Later, the article quotes Maria saying "she hopes the authorities are not targeting Latinos."

Gee, ya think just because they put the whites in one line and gave them blue bracelets and the latinos in another without any bracelets that they might have been targeting latinos?

Speaking of targeting latinos, how nice that the Washington Post now says this of Augusto Pinochet, who died earlier this week:

"It's hard not to notice, however, that [Pinochet] the evil dictator leaves behind the most successful country in Latin America. In the past 15 years, Chile's economy has grown at twice the regional average, and its poverty rate has been halved. It's leaving behind the developing world, where all of its neighbors remain mired. It also has a vibrant democracy. Earlier this year it elected another socialist president, Michelle Bachelet, who suffered persecution during the Pinochet years.

Like it or not, Mr. Pinochet had something to do with this success..."

And...

"In 'Dictatorships and Double Standards,' a work that caught the eye of President Ronald Reagan, [Jeanne] Kirkpatrick argued that right-wing dictators such as Mr. Pinochet were ultimately less malign than communist rulers, in part because their regimes were more likely to pave the way for liberal democracies. She, too, was vilified by the left. Yet by now it should be obvious: She was right.
In "Dictatorships and Double Standards," a work that caught the eye of President Ronald Reagan, Ms. Kirkpatrick argued that right-wing dictators such as Mr. Pinochet were ultimately less malign than communist rulers, in part because their regimes were more likely to pave the way for liberal democracies. She, too, was vilified by the left. Yet by now it should be obvious: She was right."

So Pinochet came to power in a U.S. backed military coup to unseat a democratically elected President and was later responsible for the deaths of two to three thousand dissidents, and was implicated in a car bombing in Washington D.C. that also led to the killing of an innocent American civilian. That's o.k., according to the Post, because "his" policies ultimately led to the creation of South America's most economically successful state.

In short, the Post's logic is that "so you killed a few thousand, your policies led to the economic prosperity of millions, so we'll forgive you." How "liberal" is it to say that right wing dictators are "less malign than communist rulers" because liberal democracies are more likely to follow dictatorships?.

Remember this the next time you hear the media derided as "liberal." The paper that brought about the downfall of Nixon through thorough, necessary reporting is now editorializing about how a mass murderer isn't so bad after all. Thousands died, but millions now live better, so all is forgiven.

And these people are charged with keeping us informed about the dangers of governmental power run amok?