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.

I watched this tape because of a term paper I was doing on the Panama invasion in 1989. I thought I had a good idea of the invasion, but this documentary showed what the biased news did not and was not allowed to show. After seeing the tape, I was enraged by the dirty back-room Realpolitik courtesy of Bush I and his henchmen. The comments by the Pentagon spokesman and military general were ironic when excellently juxtaposed with images that refuted their half-truths and deception. The documentary is not the kind you would ever see on the History Channel, but (perhaps for that reason) it is well worth watching. I am no history buff, but this 1 1/2 hour exposé was quick and done. You might understand why people in yet another corner of the world hate U.S. Americans after being enlightened and angered by _The Panama Deception._

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 (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.

I wanted to write just to share some light on the issue of U.S. foreign policy but after reading the posts here I'm glad to see that not all Americans are short-minded and/or blind about their government, or supporting it even though they know what things they do just believing thats what a good "patriot" do. I would say a good patriot is what a lot of the people here posting are doing because it shows the world there's still hope the U.S. can become the country it's supposed to be as it was intended by the U.S. constitution. Patriotic is not defending the U.S. blindly just because is your country.

Let me just say I was 11 years old at the time and a lover of the USA (I had already been in Disney World :)) but two months prior to the invasion Americans surrounded my neighborhood, closed the roads, put cutting wire, armored vehicles, helicopters flying etc. (they did this because there were still some Americans living there, although imagine that were you live Chinese soldiers take control over the area, in a nice town of Florida, I don't think you would like that) and I have to walk home (I was returning from my school, still in the uniform) and an American started pointing me with this huge machine gun attached at the top of an AV (I guess now that was an M-60) and kept following me as I walk. Let me tell you, that can change your life. During the invasion I have to stay down under my bed for almost two weeks until it ended. Not an experience I would like to repeat.

Believe me or not, the video not only is unbiased, but is actually missing even more. For all of you who think is biased, just remember, everything you were hearing about the invasion was good things, like the US government was doing "just" a favor to the Panamanian people, that "all" of us loved it, etc. Obviously these guys wanted to tell the truths the US gov. didn't say and exposed the lies they did say. So in that aspect, yo better believe they were biased, that's the intention of the video, to go against what they told us, not to make it appear as if they were doing the film from a neutral point of view and that the conclusion of the film was what they told us on it.

I read some people here was mad saying it was all lies but they were never in Panama, not before, during, nor after. Then how can they say is not true? I know this people don't like hearing negative things about their country, but imagine, I'm not only hearing hypocrisies about the reasons of the invasion, which offends me, but also a lot of my fellow countrymen died.

Well, I wrote more stuff but its too long to fit in here, if I create a homepage in the future, I'll post it and give a link here. Peace out