Iraq and legality again Re: [extropy-chat] Professor Being Sued Over Anti-Aging Comments

BillK pharos at gmail.com
Wed Jun 22 22:38:16 UTC 2005


On 6/22/05, Mike Lorrey wrote:
> 
> This is also wrong, incorrect, not in accordance with the facts. There
> had a been an election. Noriega lost. Noriega refused to admit defeat,
> had his forces beat up and imprisone those who protested (and shot a US
> military officer). The winner fled the country and requested our
> assistance in restoring the rightfully elected government to power.
> Under the Organization of American States Charter, the US government
> was bound to do so for a co-signatory government. These are the facts.
> I know from personal experience. To claim otherwise is to perpetrate a
> fraud for the sake of anti-US propaganda.
> 
> Stop it.
> 

But, but, but,.... Mike, you can't just selectively quote the facts
you happen to like, and omit other facts that tell a different story.
The US was certainly not squeaky clean in the Noriega affair.

Noriega was in the pay of, and trained by, the CIA, possibly from as
early as 1960 until 1988. Then he fell out with his US paymasters. The
details vary, depending on whose version you like best. There was a
standoff for about six months with lots of provocations and incidents
on both sides, while the US built up their forces in the Panama bases.
When the marine was killed, this was used to justify an invasion in
December 1989 to capture and extradite Noriega.

>From Wikipedia:
On December 22 the Organization of American States passed a resolution
deploring the invasion and calling for withdrawal of U.S. troops. A
similar resolution was passed on December 29 by the United Nations
General Assembly.

After the invasion, governments throughout Latin America — including
the government of Chile under Augusto Pinochet, which was generally
supportive of United States policies — issued statements condemning
the invasion and calling for the immediate withdrawal of U.S. troops.
One of the reasons Bush gave for the invasion, the reestablishment of
democracy in Panama, was widely viewed with suspicion, since the
United States was perceived throughout Latin America as one of the
primary destabilizers of other democratically elected governments in
the region. In the recent past, the United States had shown little
concern for well-publicized human rights violations in other Latin
American countries with right-wing governments such as Chile,
Argentina, Uruguay and El Salvador and was also believed to have
supported insurgencies in several countries. Moreover Noriega was
considered to be a former puppet of the United States who had
cooperated with American efforts to destabilize the Sandinista regime
in Nicaragua. It is generally believed that during that time the
United States did little to curtail his involvement in drug
trafficking.

BillK



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