The Panama Deception

It seems people are letting their politics decide their ratings. As a documentary, it's good but not outstanding. It's a fairly straight forward PBS or Frontline type documentary. It won an academy award because it was against not very strong competition. One was downright bland, about using music in films.

The first third of the doc is completely uncontroversial. It's a straight forward history of Panama, the canal, and how Noriega got into power.

The ones hating this doc, calling it paranoid, were themselves paranoid and downright hysterical, and bashing the film on flimsy pretexts. The film actually gives plenty of voices from the Bush administration. This includes a Pentagon spokesman and several generals.

And sometimes their outrage leads them to spout falsehoods. They claim the film says "The US Army used lasers to kill people." No, it says some weapons were laser guided, being tested in the field for the new time.

Claiming "There were mass graves" and "thousands dead." That's not even controversial. Every estimate is several thousand killed.

Claiming some of the experts should be better labeled. That might be the only criticism with any validity. Perhaps for a few, who are shown as authors or journalists. I went to the trouble of looking them up. Two were in academia, one a TV reporter, another a national radio reporter.

The Panama Deception (1992)

*** (out of 4)

Oscar-winning documentary takes a look at the American invasion of Panama in 1989. Through archival footage from all the major networks, we see that the majority of Americans and all of the media were behind this invasion even though overtime it became clear that they were mislead about the real reasons. People were told that it was for American safety but this documentary tries to show a more malicious reason, which resulted in hundreds, if not thousands, of Panama citizens being killed. When viewing this film today I think many people will connect it to events that are going on within the last few years. Overall this is a pretty impressive documentary and you can tell that the director really has a passion and anger over what happened. There's some pretty graphic material here and especially towards the end when we're told about all the mass graves and we see some brutal footage of them being dug up where we see many of the bodies that were thrown in there. We also get some photographs of dead civilians who were shot and just left on the streets. Throughout all of this we get footage from the major news broadcasts and we see how they were all behind the invasion and not too many questions were asked and not much detail was given to anything except showing the Americans who were killed. As impressed as I was with the film, the one thing I'd hold against it (and many documentaries) is that they only show one side of the story. It's really too bad someone who supported what happened wasn't interviewed to give their opinions on why this invasion was needed. Many sources here are Panama newspapers and I'm really not sure if we can trust them any more than we can trust American newspapers. With that said, THE PANAMA DECPTION does a very good job at getting its point across and history buffs will certainly want to check this out.

First it must be stated that it is quite apparent that those involved in the production of this documentary have an agenda and that makes the documentary somewhat obviously biased. It also must be noted that, no matter what the reasons were for the invasion, the people of Panama are certainly no better (or worse) for the change in government and worse off because of the invasion. Whether Noriega was involved in drug-trafficking or not (I would tend to think most governments with large-scale drug production areas within their borders probably are, and Noriega is no exception), getting rid of Noriega was like shhoting a flea with a Howitzer: noisy, messy, expensive and ultimately futile overkill. A good piece of work so long as you understand that there is an agenda here. I suspect that if you put the governmental story on one side and this on the other, the truth would be somewhere between them, but closer to the documentary than the government.

Although the film maker's bias tends to show through, this is probably the most thourough (I bet I spelled that wrong) account of the US invasion of Panama I have ever seen. I have already read volumes of books, all of which agree with what was expressed in this documentary (and the funny thing was, I wasn't specifically looking for that, either. I couldn't find any first-hand accounts that towed the US-government line).

I have two friends who served in Panama, and became very disillusioned after the things they were ordered to do. Although most people will never hear of this, much of what is discussed in this documentary is actually standard military practice all over the world. I'm not defending it, i'm not attacking it. I'm just stating it; shelling of civilians is somewhat of a game to many military men. Most of my male family members in the States are military guys, and there was a massive change in them after their tour of duty.

The funny thing is, I think this is a great documentary, and i'm further from the left than Reagan. But, you can't argue with the truth. A splendid look at how the truth gets shut out sometimes.

The "Panama Deception" refers to acts and events that are classically typical in the history of this and other powerful governments throughout history. The U.S. administration in power during the period is known by informed people of all economic and political strata to be particularly cynical.

I notice a highly critical review of this film on this site is by a "19 year veteran of the army." While what this person says has some merit, I put little stock in the opinion of someone who is naive enough to join the army and is in such deep denial over the sins of government.

I applaud this film. Heck, it even won an Academy award - a stunning turn of events considering it's radical nature - that is, in your face truth.