Word: panama
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1990-1999
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Last week the general's lawyers began their response to the 10-count indictment charging him with taking millions in bribes to turn Panama into a way station for Colombian cocaine lords. The presentation was unexpectedly tame. Gone were the claims that Noriega, who helped the U.S. funnel illegal aid to the Nicaraguan contras, had been duped by CIA contract pilots using their empty planes to fly home cocaine. By last week any hint of that defense had been discarded, as had plans for calling as a witness Oliver North, the former White House aide at the center...
Still, various DEA chiefs and attaches admitted that Noriega's Panama Defense Forces had closed down the infamous Darien drug-refining lab of the Medellin cartel, confiscated drug-refining chemicals, helped catch drug traffickers and money launderers, and even closed a cartel-controlled bank. James Bramble, former head of the DEA office in Panama, testified that a P.D.F. tip led to the capture of the cartel's top money launderer, Ramon Milian Rodriguez, when he was in Florida to ship $5.5 million in drug proceeds to Panama. His arrest occurred at about the same time that the prosecution claims Noriega...
...same time this "mop-up" was going on, the U.S. Army was making sure that we knew just how dangerous the supposed general population is. In Panama City there was "sporadic sniping, widespread civil looting, and 'dignity battalions' that roamed the unoccupied portions of the city...
...civil looting"? Surprise. Three days of riots gutted Panama City's small shops, destroying cockroach capitalism for the forseeable future and turning this stable if corrupt country into a nation quickly on its way to hard-core deprivation. The U.S. forces did not have orders to intervene to stop the riots, so they let them run their course...
...PANAMA AND IRAQ solidified the new total war strategy in the hearts and minds of Americans. The best example of that solidification is the strange trajectory of the Fuel Air Explosive (FAE) documented by Michael E. Kinsley '72 in The New Republic...