Documentary: The Panama Deception

[Anthony]

I ran into this documentary when listening to a podcast about the Panama Papers leak.

Here's a short description from Wikipedia:

The Panama Deception is a 1992 American documentary film that won the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature.[1] The film is critical of the actions of the US military during the 1989 invasion of Panama by the United States, covering the conflicting reasons for the invasion and depicting the US media as biased. It also highlighted media bias, showing events that were unreported or systematically misreported in the news, including downplaying the number of civilian casualties. It was directed by Barbara Trent of the Empowerment Project and was narrated by actress Elizabeth Montgomery.

The film asserts that the U.S. government invaded Panama primarily to destroy the PDF, the Panamanian Defense Forces who were perceived as a threat to US control over Panama. The film includes footage of mass graves uncovered after the US troops had withdrawn, burned down neighborhoods, as well as depictions of some of the 20,000 refugees who fled the fighting.

It actually goes much further than this and really shows the true nature of the American Empire. They went full on Nazi on this little country; intentionally bombing and burning down civilian homes, using media to portray Noriega as an evil dictator, journalists were shown exectly what the US wanted them to see and report, employing false-flag tactics, executing people and storming their homes, harassing the political opposition in the country and US army acting like stormtroopers, putting people in camps, people were put in trucks and taken away to be tortured, installing a puppet government, increasing drug trafficking. There are reports of advanced weapons being used, such as lasers that would melt people right on the street where they were standing. The death of Torrijos is also touched upon, suggesting that the CIA was involved.

US claimed that only some 200 people were killed, while more accurate estimates put the number in between 2500 - 4000.

Reasons given for the bombing of Panama include; a testing ground for the US attack on Iraq in 1991, taking control over the Panama Canal, using the country as a forward operating base to further entrench themselves in Latin America.

One of the things that wasn't discussed in the documentary and which John Perkins wrote in his book The Secret History of the American Empire:

Surely you've heard the rumors about why Noriega was taken down and today rots in a U.S. prison."

"I've heard that he had cameras on Contadora Island." It was an infamous resort off Panama's coast, a "safe haven" where U.S. businessmen could treat politicians to every conceivable vice. I had visited—and used—Contadora several times during my EHM days.

"You heard who got caught by those cameras?"

"Rumors that George W. was photographed doing coke and having kinky sex during the time his father was president." There was a theory in Latin America that Noriega had used incriminating photos of the younger Bush and his cronies to convince the older Bush, the president, to side with the Panamanian administration on key issues. In retaliation, H. W. invaded Panama and hustled Noriega off to a Miami prison. The building housing Noriega's confidential files had been incinerated by bombs; as a side effect, more than two thousand innocent civilians were burned to death in Panama City that day in December 1989. Many people claimed that this theory offered the only logical explanation for violently attacking a nation without an army and that posed no threat to the United States.

All in all, I think this is a must see. The full documentary is available on YouTube.