The generals don't repent:

...They want the public to accept that view of their action-in other words, a complete vindication...

...And it will learn how to be happy...

...His Radical party, reeling under capital flight, inflation that reached 196 percent per month earlier this year, and continued flare-ups by military rebels, was thrashed in recent elections by the Peronist Justicialist party of Carlos Saul Menem...

...Thousands of others were detained and tortured...

...Isidro Caceres, who once served as a henchman to (now-pardoned) ex-President Jorge Videla during the dark years...

...Menem apparently believes that moving the society closer to the fringe is preferable to the admittedly difficult chore of redefining and restructuring the institution itself...

...Gone, in fact, is Alfonsin...

...As defense minister, Menem turned his back on the kind of constitutionalist military men favored by Alfonsin and picked Italo Luder...

...And that makes any celebration of democratic transition and calls for "social justice" seem hollow indeed...

...PATRICK LACEFIELDRICK LACEFIELD...

...Explained by Menem as a "way to incorporate the military into the democratic process" and as a "healing of wounds," the move confirms instead the continued power of military circles over the civilian government and Peronist complicity in the exercise of that power...

...The problem is that it seems to be inexorably moving in the wrong direction...

...Colonel Aldo Rico, they "were engaged in a just and necessary war to assure the historical continuity of the nation...

...Though some of those pardoned were former Montonero guerrillas, most of the pardons went to officers directly responsible for thousands of murders, rapes, tortures, and kidnappings...

...The bad news is that, as in much of Latin America-and despite the much-ballyhooed wave of democratic revolution-civil society in Argentina still seems all too dependent on a military that, in the words of one Peronist analyst, "is on the fringes of Argentine reality...

...Well, that learning process continues...

...During the military's turn in power from 1976-1983, as many as nine thousand Argentinians died in detention after the military was unleashed in a "dirty war" to squash the urban terrorism and insurrectionary tactics of the Montonero guerrilla movement...

...REPORT ON ARGENTINA THE GENERALS DONT BUT THEY'LL TAKE A PARDON In his moving work Prisoner Without a Name, Cell Without a Number, Jacobo Timerman reflected on his thirty-one months of imprisonment and torture by the armed forces of Argentina: "I know that the Argentine people will not cease to weep for its dead, because throughout its often brutal history, it has remained loyal to its tragedies...

...As army chief of staff, Menem appointed a darling of the military establishment, Gen...

...With the defeat in the Falklands/Malvinas war at the hands of Britain, the military proved themselves more adept at shooting and torturing their own people than engaging in serious war-fighting...

...They want more money for the military, better salaries...

...I know it will succeed in overcoming the paranoids of every extreme, the cowards of every sector...

...Additionally, they have seen military spending fall from 4.6 percent of the budget in 1983 to 2 percent in 1989...

...Fifty thousand more marched in other Argentine cities...

...Gone are those euphoric days in April 1987 when then-President Raul Alfonsin rallied half-a-million Argentinians in the Plaza de Mayo in defense of democracy, then flew personally to receive the surrender of embittered military rebels...

...Menem thinks he has a better idea about Argentina's other nagging crisis, too-the problem of the Argentine military...

...One example of the prevailing attitude is a captain in the Navy, Alfredo Astiz, who was directly implicated in the disappearance, torture, and death of a young Swiss-Argentinian woman during the "dirty war...

...In fact, the military will take the pardons, though they feel they've committed no crime...

...The good news in all this is that, for the first time since 1928, power was passed peacefully from one civilian president to another...

...In the process of punishment that began in 1983 when civilians returned to power, a dozen top military figures were tried, convicted, and imprisoned...

...Anticipating just such a pardon, over 150,000 Argentinians packed the broad boulevards of Buenos Aires on September 8, urging Menem to hold the convicted and the accused to the letter of the law...

...He was promoted, over Alfonsin's protests...

...Human rights groups fought the measure, lost, and filed charges before the deadline against up to 450 more officers implicated in "dirty war" crimes...

...Peronism is a curious creature, described alternatively as "an emotional relationship with a candidate by people who understand nothing of platforms and policies," and as "the worst of both possible worlds-socialism without a plan and capitalism without a free market...

...Menem, having won on themes of populism and plenty, now vows to overhaul the tax collection system, attack the bloated public sector, and end commodity subsidies, ushering in what he blithely dubs "private enterprise and free trade with social justice incorporated...

...Prominent among the demonstrators were thousands of Menem's Peronist brethren, led by party deputies hoisting a placard that read: "We who voted for Menem are against the pardons...

...Human rights activists now talk of forcing a plebiscite to override the pardons...

...The first week of October, Menem pardoned nearly 280 persons convicted or accused in connection with the "dirty war" and subsequent military uprisings against the Alfonsin government...

...While it remains to be seen whether Menem will give the military all it desires of him, the initial signs are not good...

...On the other hand, one Jorge Luis Mittelbach, a lieutenant colonel with thirty years' service, was remanded to the military stockade for thirty days last year for publicly speculating that his consistent passover for promotion was due to his refusal to torture prisoners during the military regime...

...Luder, as interim president briefly in 1975, signed a blank check to the military authorizing them to pull out all the stops in "annihilating subversive elements...

...On the other side, Argentine military officers speak bitterly of "psychological encirclement...

...Adding insult to injury, Alfonsin was forced by economic choas to cut short his presidential term, handing over power to the flamboyant Menem in July five months early...

...In the words of renegade Lt...

...Great bunch of guys, huh...

...Later, Alfonsin moved to immunize junior officers who were "only" following orders...

...In the wake of military discontent (three-quarters of the military officers refused to move their units against military rebels in the Easter Sunday, 1987 uprising), Alfonsin pushed through the Congress a punto final-a deadline, February 22, 1988, by which all human rights charges against military officers had to be filed...

...What they want is a vindication for what they did and after that they'll be wanting a monument in the Plaza de Mayo...

...Since a pardon doesn't eliminate the crime, the military [will] not be satisfied with [a pardon]," says Emilio Mignone, head of the Center for Legal and Social Studies, a human rights group...

...And the military does constitute a tightly-wound subculture, which commands little popular support and is the object of accumulated grievances owing to its repressive role...

...Menem, who himself spent time in jail under the military regime, has taken the matter further...