Posted on 05/29/2017 11:08:30 PM PDT by Timpanagos1
Manuel Antonio Noriega, the brash former dictator of Panama and sometime ally of the United States whose ties to drug trafficking led to his ouster in 1989 in what was then the largest American military action since the Vietnam War, has died. He was 83.
President Juan Carlos Varela of Panama announced Mr. Noriega’s death on Twitter early Tuesday morning.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
He was still alive?!?
Pineapple Face is gone.
Yo!
The Panamanians used to call him “Old Pineapple Face” due to his pockmarked complexion. He was very valuable to the CIA at one time, and allowed to get away with dealing cocaine in very large quantities.
He was only 83? Wow!
“He was very valuable to the CIA at one time, and allowed to get away with dealing cocaine in very large quantities.”
Being a dictator on the CIA payroll has some great benefits, but their retirement plan is somewhat onerous.
He was finally Oxycuted?
There are enough stories about Tony from Panama...that you could make a 20-hour mini-series. I was stationed there in the late 1980s. Every single day was an adventure in that period.
Tony at some point, had decals to enter all US bases. His daughter returned from outside of Panama in this heated anti-Tony period and wasn’t aware of the negativity. She came up to the gate and just blasted through the Albrook entry gate. SP’s were chasing her all the way through Albrook to the other side of the installtion, and finally arrested her. Some suggest alcohol was an issue for her detention. This was around midnight, and Tony woke to hear the news....got all peeved, and at 6AM, the Panama cops began arresting GI’s left and right as they left for work. Must have been at least a hundred GI’s detained.
Sounds like a Banana Republic where only Friends of Tony actually have bananas.
I’m sure he was a bad guy, was he worse than a lot of the bad guys running the world? One wonders if there were any other motives to arrest him. He backstabbed us I guess.
IBWB
Pres. Carter gave him the Panama Canal and he was hooking up with communist Cuba. The Canal had to stay open.
I wonder what he knew about Hillary.
So many lives destroyed by drugs. I wonder if he ever regretted & repented.
He was a “cold war orphan” - a strongman originally embraced by the US as part of the bulwark against communism then discarded when the USSR collapsed. Pinochet was another, though Thatcher remained loyal to him for his help in the Falklands War (he helped pin the best Argentine troops along the Chile border so the Brits encountered many young conscripts instead).
Noriega threw numerous ribaldd parties at which senior us officials were covertly videotaped...enjoying themselves zestfully:
Panamanian INSURANCE..?
later there were stories about the US invasion objective being to restore democracy.
It was actually all a huge cover for a BANK ROBBERY, to recover those blackmaIL films.
The effort was successful.
The post invasion fiasco is Bush 1 wanted the drug indictment quashed.
Interesting. Thanks for posting.
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