4.8 • 4.1K Ratings
🗓️ 25 January 2020
⏱️ 36 minutes
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0:00.0 | Here in the song Panama in the late 1980s wouldn't be all that weird. |
0:13.0 | It had such memorable lyrics like Hot Chew burning down the avenue, got an on ramp coming |
0:18.9 | through my bedroom. |
0:20.5 | And Panama was the last hit single, the band Van Halen recorded with their lead singer, |
0:25.9 | David Lee Roth before he left the band in 1985. |
0:32.9 | Except it would be weird if you were the dictator of a Latin American country, and you |
0:41.6 | were hiding out in the Vatican Embassy in Panama City, and the American military would not |
0:47.2 | stop playing. |
0:55.2 | You see on December 20th, 1989, the United States invaded Panama. |
1:03.2 | President Bush sent out American troops there mainly to capture General Manuel Noriega, |
1:09.2 | the self-proclaimed, maximum leader of the country. |
1:13.2 | The United States had a complicated relationship with the military dictator of Panama. |
1:17.8 | Sometimes Noriega had been an ally, but sometimes he wasn't. |
1:21.6 | In the late 80s, Noriega, or La Pena, or pineapple face because of his pockmark skin, was |
1:28.6 | increasingly a problem because he played both sides. |
1:32.6 | Sometimes he helped the United States by providing information to its intelligence agencies, |
1:37.4 | and sometimes he tipped off drug cartels. |
1:40.6 | In 1988, two federal courts in the United States indicted Noriega on drug trafficking charges. |
1:47.6 | The general had also canceled the results of Panama's 1989 presidential election. |
1:54.0 | And in December of 1989, Panamanian troops shot and killed an unarmed American soldier in |
1:59.8 | Panama City. |
2:01.7 | That was it for President George H.W. Bush. |
... |
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