story, but that this idea had been quickly vetoed by Defense Secretary Cheney, suggesting that the
US command authority had its doubts about Curtis's ability to tell a tale useful for the Bush regime'spropaganda mill. [fn 44]
With the incidents at Avenue A, the imposing "mind war" and "mind control" apparatus of the US
regime went into action. Here Bush was taking a leaf from the book of his father's protege, Adolf
Hitler. When Hitler had wished to invade Poland, he first completed his military preparations andthen staged the infamous provocation code-named Operation Canned Meat at the Gleiwitz radio
station on the German side of the border with Poland. The Nazis took some German convicts from a
jail, murdered them, and then dressed them in Polish uniforms. These bodies were then presented to
the press as the result of a murderous Polish raid across the border. Within hours, Hitler had issued
an early-morning declaration of war. Bush showed that his pedigree had been acquired in the sameschool.
Bush gave the final order for the attack on Sunday, December 17. He made a series of raving
statements about the alleged sexual molestation of Mrs. Curtis, and it was evident that racist
hysteria was being actively elicited. In his speech delivered at 7:20 AM on December 21, 1989announcing the US invasion, Bush said: *
Many attempts have been made to resolve this crisis through diplomacy and negotiations. All were
rejected by the dictator of Panama, General Manuel Noriega, an indicted drug trafficker.
Last Friday, Noriega declared his military dictatorship to be in a state of war with the United Statesand publicly threatened the lives of Americans in Panama. The very next day forces under his
command shot and killed an unarmed American serviceman, wounded another, arrested and brutally
beat a third American serviceman and then brutally interrogated his wife, threatening her with
sexual abuse. That was enough. [fn 45]
On December 22, Bush was asked what had made him decide to launch the attack now. He replied:
I think what changed my mind was the events that I cited in briefing the American people on this
yesterday: the death of the Marine, the brutalizing, really obscene torture of the Navy lieutenant,
and the threat of sexual abuse and the terror inflicted on that Navy lieutenant's wife.... [fn 46]
Later in the same press conference Bush obsessively returned to the same topic, this time answering
a question about the Soviet reaction to the US move:
And I also need to let him [Gorbachov] know-- look, if an American marine is killed, if they kill an
American Marine-- that's real bad. And if they threaten and brutalize the wife of an American
citizen, sexually threatening the lieutenant's wife while kicking him in the groin over and overagain, then, Mr. Gorbachov, please understand, this president is going to do something about it."
Blacks and mestizos make up the vast majority of the population of Panama. The principal enemy
image was constructed around the figure of Noriega, who was ridiculed as "the pineapple" in the
US media loyal to Bush. Noriega was not however the only target: Francisco Rodriguez, the pro-Noriega President of Panama, was, like Noriega, a mestizo, while the minister of government and
justice, the minister of the treasury, and the minister of labor were all black. The foreign minister
was of Chinese background, as was the head of the small air force. A number of Noriega's leading
PDF colleagues were black. By contrast, Guillermo Endara, the new US puppet president who was
now adminiustered his oath of offilily-white was his retinue, including first vice president Ricardo Arias Calderon and second vicece by US military officers on a US military base, was white, and
president Guillermo "Billy" Ford. There would be only one non-white in the new Endara cabinet, a
black woman who was minister of education. The rest of the US assets belonged to the lily-white
oligarchy of Panama, the rabiblancos or "cottontails," who had ruled the country with supreme
incomptence and maximum corruption until the advent of the nationalist revolution of Gen. Omar