Word: noriega
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...fact, such a development might produce stability of a distinctly unwelcome variety. Many times previously, the interaction of a weak civilian leadership and a strong military has plunged Panama -- and other U.S. client states in Central America -- into dictatorship. A week after the military triumph against Noriega, the U.S. was discovering again that it is much easier to depose a dictator than to establish a democracy...
...member Panama Defense Forces might have had of making a coordinated counterattack on invasion night. "The whole infrastructure of our forces was destroyed in the first hour," admitted Major Ivan Gaytan, a top P.D.F. planner. Though some Pentagon planners had anticipated 70 U.S. military deaths, the figure was 23. Noriega's irregular Dignity Battalions raised more havoc than expected with sniper fire and hit-and-run attacks in Panama City streets. But when Lieut. Colonel Luis del Cid, Manuel Noriega's most trusted military aide, waved a white flag over his fortress in Chiriqui province and Noriega deserted his fighters...
Inevitably there were mistakes. Many paratroopers missed their landing zones. The shelling of Noriega's Comandancia headquarters destroyed houses in the adjacent Chorrillo neighborhood, where many poor people live. Air attacks on the San Miguelito area were devastating. The U.S. embassy said 300 Panamanian civilians died (unofficial estimates go as high as 800), an alarming toll. Many Panamanians criticized the failure of the Americans to move against the looting that engulfed Panama City. "There should have been troops placed along commercial arteries," complained Steve Maduro, a past director of Panama's Chamber of Commerce. "Our police force was nonexistent...
...Operation Just Cause quickly removed Noriega from power and gave a new government a chance to take root. As a bonus, it recovered some 48,000 weapons that might one day have been turned against Americans or sent off to El Salvador as part of Noriega's gun running to rebels there. In Panama, American . servicemen fully earned the kind of medals that were so lavishly dispensed after Grenada...
...Elena are summarily executed, and a self-appointed National Salvation Front takes charge of the country. But the shape of the new order is far from clear. -- In Timisoara, cradle of the revolution, people ricochet between agony and elation, fear and hope. -- Panama's strongman has fallen, but Manuel Noriega takes refuge in the papal embassy, sending Washington and the Vatican into diplomatic deadlock. -- As a military operation, the U.S. invasion gets a glowing assessment from the brass and the experts...