The Panama Deception

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.

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.

Aesthetically I do not value "The Panama Deception" very highly. Most of the time it looks poorly made; even the image quality of the footage Barbara Trent shot in Panamá looks poor. The reason that it works for me as a Panamanian, and that it may have considerable value for a foreign viewer, is that it is quite honest when it analyses the so-called "Operation Just Cause" to destroy Panamanian armed forces, under the guise of an international raid on Manuel Antonio Noriega, in the name of democracy. Nobody believes this today and it is not hard to do so in retrospective, when one thinks of El Salvador or Nicaragua, just to name a couple of Latin American countries where self-determination was violated by American troops. I could be biased because it deals with one of the lowest points in the Panamá-USA relations, from a point of view that leaves little space for doubting what it denounces: on one hand, it offers motives for the Panamanian invasion, that sound more credible than the rhetoric arguments of American or Panamanian officials, and on the other it shows how irresponsibly the US media treated the fact. Besides, in the final analysis, what Trent seems to be more concerned for, is the empowerment (as the name of her organization) of the American people, through the acknowledgement of what their governments have done in the last two centuries, taking the invasion of Panamá as a case in point. Panamanians all have different opinions about what happened, about the data and inferences the film offers, as many Americans also do; and I believe this is what makes this documentary work. In the case of my fellow countrymen, it is also a starting point to research the effects of a hyper-violent moment of our national history, when suddenly the notion (and our perception) of a "state" vanished, and we lived moments of total social, economic and political chaos with protagonists of all social classes, as the film graphically shows.

Narrated by Elizeabeth Montgomery and produced by Barbara Trent who previously produced "Cover-Up" a documentary about the Iran-Countra scandal or deception "The Panama Deception" has to do with the real reasons behind the 1989 invasion of Panama which had nothing at all to do what we the American people were told at the time by the Bush I Administration and the US media.

The unprovoked invasion of Panama that cost as many as 4,000 Panamanians and two dozen US servicemen's lives had to do with the September 1977 Carter-Torrijos Treaty that was to hand over the Panama Canal to the Panamanian Government on New Years Eve 1999. Something that the new incoming Reagan Administration was dead against and determined to overturn. After Panamanian strong man Omar Torrijos was killed in a mysterious plane crash on July 31, 1981 CIA sponsored Manny Noriaga was was put in charge hoping that he would do as he's told by his handlers back in the USA. Manny who was canned or kicked off the CIA payroll by President Jimmy Carter's CIA Director Mansfield Turner back in 1978 was immediately put back on the CIA payroll by the Reagan Adminstration at double his salary. It's then that Manny started to organize both drug trafficking and supporting the Sandinista contras for his employers the CIA.

It was later when Manny didn't go along with what he was told that the US now run by President George Bush the First made plans to dump him in him becoming too independent for his own good. After a number of failed attempts to ouster Manny it became obvious to the Bush Administration that it had to use use force but at the same time demonize Manny in order to get the American public to support a military invasion and take over of his country. Planting stories about Manny Noriaga being a sexual degenerate and drug user and pusher, which he was for the CIA, as well as Hitler lover it didn't take long for Bush in the excuse of restoring democracy in Panama, which in fact never had it, let loose the "Dogs of War" on that country from which it has never recovered since now over 20 years after it was invaded.

What turned out to be the real reason for the invasion of Panama was not just to scudded the 1977 Carter-Torrijos Teaty but destroy and disarm the Panamanian Army! With the Panamnian Army needed in protecting the canal the aforementioned treaty became invaded which Bush made sure it would be! And thus have the US military, which in fact destroyed it, replace the Panamanian Army when the treaty came into effect some ten years later!It was also the invasion of Panama that opened the door to a new and aggressive form of US foreign policy that was implemented in countries like Iraq, in 1991 & 2003, Kosovo and Afganistan that with no Soviet Union to worry about no one not even the UN being able to challenge it.

P.S Even though the documentary "The Panama Deception" was released in 1992 it in fact accurately predicted the course of US foreign policy for the next 20 or so years! Something that Jean Dixon or even the great seer Nostradamus couldn't do and it didn't even need a crystal ball to do it!

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.