The Panama Deception (Never Forget History)

[Mark Wells]

The Panama Deception, virtually unheard of today, is an Oscar winning 1992 documentary by a filmmaker named Barbara Trent that attempts to reveal the atrocities committed by the hands of a deceptive United States government headed by that old snake of a president (yes, you will most likely guess correct), George Herbert Walker Bush, in Panama in 1989. Accompanied by the visceral images of a desecrated humanity in the hands of gun toting mercenaries we call the American soldier, The Panama Deception tells the little known story of the invasion of Panama by the United States that rendered thousands of innocent civilians dead in an ocean of mindless carnage and butchery for the sinister motives of power and profit.

 

The story begins with an introduction to the history behind Panama – US relations, and the role of the Panama Canal in that bilateral liaison. Trent educates the viewer about a controversial history of coercion and profoundly unethical exploitation of Panama by the US since the beginning of the twentieth century that has been (very effectively) glossed over by the goons of the mainstream US media. Progressing to explain how the CIA managed to maneuver the Panamanian government and other Southern American nations by installing puppet regimes for America’s benefit, the filmmaker shows the reactionary attitude of Bush and his cronies in the Pentagon when General Manuel Noriega, the once CIA backed Panamanian General, takes Panama towards a different direction, against the best interests of the sinister machinations of the American government. The deception the film speaks of is centered on how the US government (George H.W. Bush and his profiteering chums in this case) managed to artificially engineer American sentiment against Panama by using the mainstream media, US defense institutions, and good ol’ scare tactics in order to legitimize an inhuman campaign of violence in the name of profit and power. The invasion of Panama massacred thousands of civilians and left the Central American nation helpless in the hands of sophisticated American military technology and brainwashed American mercenaries. The irony of the whole incident was how ordinary Americans were left oblivious to the carnage caused by their government while the rest of the world cried out in protest of the infamy of this mindless brutality.