clipped from: www.davidcorn.com 
Was it a cosmic coincidence that Jeane Kirkpatrick and Augusto Pinochet died within days of one another? (I'll skip the nearly obligatory comment about a post-earthly reunion.) Given all the flattering obits the former UN ambassador received, the final departure of the Chilean dictator was a timely reminder that Kirkpatrick cozied up to murderers and torturers. In fact, she provided the Reagan administration--in which she served--with the theoretical framework for bear-hugging brutes.
In a famous--or infamous--1979 Commentary article entitled "Dictatorships and Double Standards," Kirkpatrick distinguished between communist dictatorships and "right-wing autocracies," maintaining that the latter were, in a way, less evil, because they could evolve into democracies, while communist totalitarian states could not. Washington, she advised, should not worry so much about human rights abuses within these autocracies. Her argument justified the Reagan cold warrior's embrace of anti-communist, pro-American dictatorships, such as the military juntas ruling Argentina and Chile, the dictatorship of Ferdinand Marcos in the Philippines, and the apartheid regime in South Africa. Because these repressive governments were merely right-wing autocracies and not left-wing totalitarian regimes, the Reaganites could welcome them into the anti-communist crusade and use them as allies in the struggle against the Soviet Union--no matter what these tyrants did to their own society and citizens.
In Argentina and Chile, the fascistic military dictatorships Kirkpatrick supported slaughtered, disappeared and tortured thousands of citizens of people. As the National Security Archive notes: