Word: panama
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American troops faced a tough battle to restore order in Panama City, where looters, some reportedly shouting, "Viva Bush!" ransacked stores and homes and where Noriega's misnamed Dignity Battalions, a paramilitary force, were putting up a street-to-street fight. Noriega's loyalists, apparently at his direction, staged hit-and-run attacks. On Friday, two days after American military commanders began declaring victory, they fired shells at the headquarters of the U.S. Southern Command. The Pentagon admitted that its forces had encountered stiffer resistance than expected, and Bush ordered an additional 2,000 troops to Panama as reinforcements. Meanwhile...
Much could change, however, if the U.S. is unable to bring home quickly the 11,000 extra troops it dispatched for the invasion (13,000 were already on hand at permanent bases in Panama). After the far smaller invasion of Grenada, U.S. forces remained for six weeks; the Marines who invaded the Dominican Republic to thwart a leftist coup in 1965 were not completely withdrawn for 18 months...
...minimum Washington will have to rebuild a Panamanian economy that American sanctions against Noriega have shattered. Unemployment in Panama has passed 20% and the banking system is a shambles, scarcely an environment conducive to stable democracy. Rebuilding could take years and put a new strain on a U.S. budget already heavily in deficit...
None of which fazed George Bush in the slightest. At a news conference Thursday the usually reserved President seemed almost cocky. American casualties in the Panama operation -- more than a score dead and 200 wounded at week's end -- were heartbreaking but nevertheless "worth it," said Bush. He closed with a note of defiant self-confidence: "I have an obligation as President to conduct the foreign policy of this country the way I see fit . . . if the American people don't like it, I expect they'll get somebody else to take my job, but I'm going to keep...
...roundly denounced as a wimp as recently as October, when the U.S. stood aside as a Panamanian coup against Noriega failed and the dictator executed its leaders. But the October episode aside, Bush has been displaying a new vigor and assurance in foreign policy for months now. The Panama invasion only pointed it up. "I think there are an awful lot of people out there who may have had some erroneous impressions of the President who had them dramatically changed in the last several weeks or so," says House Republican leader Robert Michel. A White House official adds that...