December 18, 1999
Panama prepares to act out trauma of U.S. invasion
PANAMA CITY (Reuters) -- Residents of a Panama City suburb set
ablaze in the December 1989 U.S. invasion to oust military strongman Gen.
Manuel Noriega are set to act out their collective trauma at a macabre
anniversary rite on Sunday.
Every year since the December 20 invasion, residents of the capital's El
Chorrillo district have built a model of one of the razed homes from their
community using tires, cardboard boxes and boards, only to torch it once
more, the rite's organiser, Hector Avila, told Reuters.
"Before we burn it, we are going to put Chinese explosives (powerful
firecrackers) inside, and throw rockets at it as if it were the U.S. attack,"
Avila said.
"When it's alight, the adults from the barrio are going to rescue the children.
We'll have black bags filled with beef to represent the bodies," he added.
The dark rite, which represents a working through of the inner city
neighbourhood's human losses, involves a cast of 50 adults and children.
"We do it so as not to forget what happened here, and so that people know
how their neighbors died," Avila added.
The U.S. government has estimated that 300 Panamanians died in the
invasion, but Panamanian human rights groups say the civilian death toll was
3,500. The number who died in El Chorrillo is unknown. Eighteen U.S.
servicemen were killed.
More:
http://www.latinamericanstudies.org/panama/chorrillo.htm~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~So few of us ever really heard or read much about it at the time. What a hideous shame, and
George W. Bush's dear old dad can take his bow for this. He set the underhanded, dishonest precedent his cheesy, grotesque son has followed.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~Subject: WHAT REALLY HAPPENED TO PANAMA
Written 4:22 pm Feb 25, 1991 by christic in cdp:christic.news
WHAT REALLY HAPPENED TO PANAMA IS A DIFFERENT STORY
Project Censored: Nomination for the "Ten Best Censored Stories of 1990"
According to a variety of non-mainstream but authoritative sources, the
U.S. invasion of Panama on December 20, 1989, received inadequate and
erroneous news coverage. It now appears that the legal implications of the
invasion, the Bush-Noriega relationship and the actual post-invasion
conditions in Panama have all been misrepresented to the American people.
But perhaps the most fraudulent news coverage dealt with the true numbers of
civilian and combat fatalities.
Official accounts spoke of 202 dead Panamanian civilians, 314 dead
Panamanian soliders, and 23 dead Americans.
The press was oddly silent two months after the invasion when a Southern
Command official acknowledged to the L.A. Times that only 50 Panamanian
soldiers died. And, American soldiers reported that at least 60 to 70
Americans were killed, possibly many more. Apparently some combat deaths
were disguised as accidental deaths unreleated to the invasion. The new
findings indicate that the U.S. lost more soldiers than Panama. Physicians
for Human Rights (PHR) has challenged the government figure of 202 dead
civilians and former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark has put the figure
at 3,000, using the phrase "conspiracy of silence" to describe efforts to
bury the true civilian death toll. The official U.S. report was based on
unconfirmed battlefield observations and mortuary and hopital statistics.
PHR's investigation tallied burial sites, mortuaries, hospital records, and
interview with officials.
In addition to Stealth Bombers dropping 2000-pound bombs, U.S. soldiers
are reported to have directly fired upon civilian homes with machine guns,
rockets, and tanks in the barrio of El Chorillo surrounding Noriega's
headquarters. U.S. soldiers evacuated apart- ments and summarily burned
them to the ground. Witnesses reported U.S. troops killing wounded
civilians with either gunshots or rifle-butts to the head.
CBS's "60 Minutes," in a September 1990 expose, reported the existence of
at least six yet-to-be-exhumed mass graves to conclude that Panamanian
civilian deaths could run as high as 4,000. The findings of many watch
groups support the "60 Minutes" casualty report. Peace and Justice in
Panama, The Central American Human Rights Commission, Panamanian National
Human Rights Commission, Panamanian Episcopal Commision and the National
Lawyers Guild all calculate the death toll to range from two to four
thousand.
More:
http://www.skepticfiles.org/socialis/real_pan.htm~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~IMPORTANT VIDEO!
You will not want to forget about this video someone posted at D.U. last year. It will be worth every minute of your time:
The Panama Deception
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-446387292666223710&q=Panama+%2B+invasion&total=88&start=0&num=10&so=0&type=search&plindex=1