[scottlocklin]

I simply can argue morality when discussing this, actually, and just did. Again, point and sputter isn't an argument, and your argument will appear absurd in a few decades, as "point and sputter" at Napoleon was among Victorian gentlemen in the UK.

I didn't say anything about democracy, and confounding this word with the word "morality" is pretty ... questionable. That was one of the points that Solzhenitsyn made very well; go read his speech to Harvard.

The US picked Franco as an Ally, yes, because it served US interests. The US also allied with a lot of unsavory spanish speaking dictators in latin america; mostly for the same reason -they saw generalissimo types as a lesser evil to communist revolutionaries. All things considered, it was a reasonable thing to do. Communist body counts were considerably higher than all of these put together.