During the 80´s just before the war started, some of the politicians in charge had some rather nefarious sides. On the last article I already spoke of the taste that the Argentinian Millitary Junta had acquired for torturing and dissapearing both terrorists and inocuous dissidents alike. Margaret Thatcher had her dark side too. She had a super close friendship with Jimmy Savile, an English DJ, television and radio personality. After Savile´s death a special investigation by the Metropolitan Police Service uncovered that he had most probably(and I´m giving the probability of a doubt only for legal reasons, since he was never convicted, he has about the same probability of being innocent as Kennedy´s death has of being "just an accident - maybe he tripped over a bullet, right?") abused of more than 500 prepubescent little boys and girls. Much of Savile's career involved working with children and young people, including visiting schools and hospital wards. (Check out the wikipedia page on the Jimmy Savile Scandal). Savile, who was knighted in 1990 for services to charity, became a regular visitor to the Prime Minister´s residence at Chequers, spending New Year's Eve with the Thatcher family on a number of occasions, and even influencing british politics and budgets on some occations too. (Here is the british article about it). Now, amongst the majority of articles I read about this close friendship of Margaret Thatcher and Jimmy Savile, the general consensus is that there is no way that she didn´t know what was going on with the sexual abuses to children, some even call her a co-conspirator. However, I´m here to present another theory, and bear with me if it´s a bit naif but its just the opinion of an outsider, since I´m clearly not-british. What if, privately, the Iron Lady was not so ironish and she was just avoiding to show weakness at every turn? What if she was in fact, at least at first, just a rising politician, which got into office with an apparently shining career but her position was fragile, and desperate to strengthen connections and power of that she could call her own had to heed to, and even "obey" certain powers that be just to fit in. Politically, it would make no sense to be associated with such a time bomb as Jimmy Savile, since she didn´t get much out of it. However, Savile was surrounded by greatly influential people of all spheres, which enabled him to do what he did under wraps for more than 40 years, in the face of both the police and the politicians, that´s some serious power wielding right there. Also, there is evidence that she was Ill adviced about the Falklands by her own people just before the war. On this article we learn that the British Intelligence mis-informed her just before the war started, stating that the Argentinians would never deploy a millitary force on the islands. Why would her own spooks lie to her? More suspicious was the call the USA made to Britain, to convince them not to retake the islands. Just after the argentinian landing on the Falklands, Ronald Reagan urged Mrs Thatcher to abandon her campaign to retake the Falklands and to hand over the islands to international peacekeepers. It is curious that it was coming from the same United States who lobbied inside and outside the UN on several occasions, so that argentinians DIDN´T have a chance to recover them using diplomatic means. So why on earth would they give her that advice? Was it because of a particular political interest in supporting an authoritarian regime in Argentina at that time?(check Argentina on that list). Or was it because they wanted Mrs. Thatcher, the first British Female Prime Minister´s office to fail? We might never know... but on this formerly secret internal document(unclassified and now open to the public), which is found on the Margaret Thatcher foundation, one of the things that becomes clear is that by March 1982, just one month before the war started, the negotiations with Argentina stalled(yes, it was the argentinian government who changed its tune and stalled them this time, but remember that the british had already been stalling them for years) and made radio silence for about a month. So how on earth did the british intelligence not imagine or suppose that by "just keeping the argentinians talking", about a sensitive subjects to Argentinians, we would eventually run out of patience, change the tune and pace, and how did they not figure the radio silence would be the prelude to an armed attack, and recommended Mrs Tatcher the exact opposite? We´re talking about british intelligence, one of the best intelligence departments in the world. A mistake that big? I don´t buy it... From this same document, we also learn that the vast majority of the nations within the United Nations scope were on the Argentinian side on the subject of soverignty just before the war. The reasons for the war, were stated inside that same document, and I quote:

[...]the Argentinians were intransigent, they had been since 1833, never changed, and the islanders were firm in their opinions, they did not want to be under the Argentines, they wanted to stay with Britain, and that so as long as these two positions remained things could never be brought to a conclusion, all you could do was to try and go on talking. [...]

So what happened from Argentina´s point of view that rushed the conflict at that particular era? Several things. Firstly, remember that as I stated the part 11 of this saga the UN upheld that the "territoriality principle" was above the "autodetermination principle", meaning that since the english population on the Falklands was not native but rather implanted by the british after they conquered an argentinian colony, it had to be de-colonized. So it forced the two nations to keep on talking and negotiating a change of leadership for the Falklands. This was mostly done under wraps since it was imperative that neither the british population nor the argentinian population interfered with the public opinion in the negotiations. As part of this policy, Argentina became the main supplier of goods to the islanders. England proposed that the transfer of soverignty would have to be done in stages, and with a deadline. Argentina accepted.

Argentina pushed for that timeframe to be of 50 years and the UK pushed for it to be of 99 years. On 1978, some of the memorandums from the Foreign Office acknowledging the transfer plan reached some of the british lords(who, curiously, were also shareholders of some of the major resource extracting - read oil - companies in the Falklands), who made them public and made an internal scandal of it, forcing the british government to backtrack and stall the negotiations. From 1978 to 1982, the british had been "just keeping argentinians talking" but doing no real progress on the definition or execution of the transfer plan, and then, Argentinian intelligence department(called SIDE), got wind that the british were going to invoke the 150 year principle on future negotiations in the UN(the principle that stated that any invaded territory by a foreign power who manages to hold it for 150 years, officially becomes part of the invading country exactly at year 151). At the start of the war, 148 years had already passed. So, what was argentina to do, wait 2 more years and let the british legally steal our land and resources, our oil? I have already told you how by 1980, the Argentinian Millitary Junta had lost most of its popular support, the economy was on a nose dive, the internal war on terror and subversion had just concluded(meaning most of the violent dissidents were either dead or fleeing to other countries) and the claims about missing people were skyrocketing. The millitary government had no more internal enemies to fight, and yet, a good portion of the hardcore millitary command believed that they should perpetuate in power. That arrived to the ears of the people, who in 1981 formed a coalition of all the civic parties and demanded an official election against the millitary candidate. At the same time, 82 labor unions united(I´m aware of the sheer redundancy of it), and organized multiple labor strikes accross the country, paralyzing the economy even more. Since that dictatorship was sponsored by the US government, like many others, mainly to fight the installation of communist regimes in South America, there was the internal belief inside the Argentinian High Command that the US would not militarily support the british against us if we attempted to take the islands by force.(which indeed happened, see just a few parragraphs above - the call from president Reagan.) The "doves", or rather the more pacific military chiefs, commanded by Lieutenant General Roberto Viola were doublecrossed by the "eagles", the more hardcore military chiefs, commanded by Lieutenant General Leopoldo Galtieri, and the deal the eagles made to rise to power was simple: they staged a millitary coup to ascend Galtieri to power in exchange for the armed recovery attempt of the Falklands. The military coups within coups were rather normal in that age of Argentina, and it succeeded. Now it was time to pay its dues and the armed conflict plan was given the green light. The first thing that Galtieri did when he arrived to power was to suspend all negotiations with the internal political parties pushing for elections, all negotiations with the british and every transition to democracy, including the negotiations with the labor unions as well. If the british seemed surprised by the sudden tune change of the negotiations over the falklands, it was because it was quite a surprise for some of the Argentinian generals too. You see, in argentinian armed forces there are 3 branches, the Armada(the Navy), the Ejercito(Army) and the Fuerza Aerea(Airforce). The plan for armed conflict of the Falklands was coined by Admiral Jorge Anaya from the Navy, and he didn´t tell anyone outside the his circle until it was time to stage the coup against Videla. Imagine this: up until december of 1981, just a few months before the war the airforce high command didn´t yet know that Argentina was going to try to recover the islands by force, and they had only that much time to improvise a battle plan to keep up with the other branches of the military. That gave rise to the myth that Galtieri declared the war while drunk on his presidential balcony. Firstly, he never declared war, war cannot be officially declared against a country who has a piece of your territory, that would be akin to recognizing british sovereignty. Secondly, he was indeed a drunkard, but the decision had already been made two years before, and kept secret because first he had to seize the power to execute the plan, but some gaping holes in the battle plans would only become evident years after the war, and as I stated before, 2 of the 3 branches of our military had to do a good deal of improvisation on them on a short time.(I´m going to expose those in detail as well). The objective was not to conquer them and evict the islanders(kelpers), but to hold them enough to force the British back to the negotiation table, to "reset the clock" in the UN, and to force the speeding of the sovereignty transfer process. Despite having no love for the Military Junta, the people still spontaneously and massively supported in a public outburst of euphoria the desicion to retake a territory that was ours. Here is the archived video from that time, in which Galtieri announces the Armed overtaking of the falklands. I´ll translate the exact words he used, making comments in beween brackets () :