Panama braces for Noriega release

PANAMA CITY, Panama (AP) -- The 1989 U.S. invasion that ousted dictator Manuel Noriega opened this small nation's road to greater democracy and prosperity.

Now Panama is bracing for his possible return, and the likelihood that he will spend little time behind bars.

Noriega, who has spent 18 years in a U.S. prison, is up for release September 9 and wants to come home. The United States wants him extradited to France to face further charges. A Miami judge will hear arguments Monday.

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Attention here is focused much less on Noriega's fate than, for instance, on plans for a $5.25 billion expansion of the canal to handle modern container ships, cruise liners and tankers too large for its current 108-foot-wide locks.

That's why most people in this nation of 3 million want to see Noriega stay in the past -- and in prison. The question is, where?

Read more: http://edition.cnn.com/2007/WORLD/americas/08/13/panama.noriega.ap/index.html

The 1989 U.S. invasion that ousted dictator Manuel Noriega opened this small nation's road to greater democracy and prosperity.

Invasions and war for democracy. What bullshit.

a mass media news corporation that even leaned to the left. Democracy promotion through violence is not something that should be supported. That use of language is the kind of shit that makes the public cool with the state of exception. :(

I wish to Dearest GOD some of our wealthier Dems and liberals would use some of their money buying up radio and TV stations. You could put a network together by doing so, and run progressive talk shows and create an Air America-type enterprise that would really count for something.

He was Reagan and Bush's guy, until he stopped skipping to their tune.

...a decade or so from now, we can have Operation Panamanian Freedom and set up an occupation force there for the long haul -- in the name of democracy, of course. Once our troops capture him, we can hand him over to a kangaroo court of "his own people" and have him hanged, just like our other former client despot who suddenly became equivalent to Hitler as soon as a) we no longer had any use for him, and b) he started getting too big for his britches.

There is oil in Panama, isn't there? :sarcasm: