Word: panama
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...battleground in Panama, however, a far less optimistic drama was unfolding. Confounding Pentagon hopes that Noriega's Panama Defense Forces would quickly crumble under a devastating U.S. onslaught, the fugitive dictator's men were preparing a determined counterattack. Instead of the quick and decisive knockout U.S. commanders had sought, the invasion was in danger of degenerating into a nasty street fight in densely populated Panama City. House-to-house fighting in a crowded urban area was something military planners were leery of because of the threat to civilians...
...recent months the Pentagon had quietly bolstered American forces in Panama in preparation for a possible strike, adding 4,500 combat troops, as well as tanks and attack helicopters, to the 8,500 soldiers already deployed at U.S. bases. The force was so strong that Pentagon planners had briefly considered dispatching a column of U.S. troops to nab Noriega during an ill- ! fated uprising by P.D.F. officers last October. That daring plan was quickly -- and, as it turned out, wisely -- discarded as too risky and uncertain...
Just how risky became clear as Operation Just Cause got under way. Many of Noriega's 4,000 best troops, including units that had raced to his rescue during the failed coup, were posted far outside Panama City. Another, less predictable menace was posed by the brutal Dignity Battalions: 8,000 fanatical pro-Noriega irregulars who had savagely attacked opposition leaders in the aftermath of last May's aborted election. Confronted by superior American forces, many P.D.F. soldiers slipped away, only to reappear later and launch counterattacks in Panama City...
When George Bush ordered military action against the increasingly arrogant dictator, the Pentagon put the finishing touches on the option it preferred and had been secretly preparing to implement: a massive simultaneous assault on all P.D.F. strongholds by a combination of forces already in Panama and a huge airlift of reinforcements from bases...
...plan called for overwhelming American forces to intimidate and neutralize the P.D.F. while special units secured vital dams and the electrical facilities powering the Panama Canal. Once organized resistance had been shattered, military police and other units trained in MOUT -- military operations in urban terrain -- would undertake the house-to-house battle against the Dignity Battalions. At Southern Command Headquarters in Panama City, the arrival of General Maxwell Thurman last Oct. 1 brought a marked change in mood. Unlike his predecessor, General Frederick Woerner, Thurman saw Noriega as primarily a military rather than a political problem. According to Pentagon sources...