The late Panama President Gen. Manuel Noriega
By agency reports
President Donald rump is not the first U.S. President to have ordered the capture and forceful transport to the United States of another country’s President.
In December 1989, U.S. President George Bush Snr, ordered thousands of U.S. troops to match into Panama to topple and capture Gen. Manuel Noriega in a military assault code named OPERATION JUST CAUSE.
The highly respected Pope John Paul II was still in office at the Vatican in Rome, General Noriega at his palace in Panama City and George Bush, the U.S. Commander-in-Chief, sat at the White House waiting for news from his Generals.
The Panamanian armed forces put up a spirited fight, but when U.S. military might became so overbearing, their Commander-In-Chief General Noriega ran to the Apostolic Nunciature (the Vatican Embassy) in his capital to seek refuge and protection.
In ordinary times when people are attacked they run to the U.S. embassy. When it is America attacking you, you run to the nearest Papal office.
Because the U.S. could not attack the Vatican embassy out of respect to the Pope and in obedience to international law, they devised a strategy to smoke Noriega out of the embassy.
A fleet of Humvees mounted with excessively loud music surrounded the Embassy and blasted HEAVY METAL music day and night without letup. While Noriega liked opera music, they played what he didn’t like.
They played songs like YOU SHOOK ME ALL NIGHT, NO MORE MR. NICE GUY, GUNS N’ ROSES and I FOUGHT THE LAW.
The music was so unbearably loud that nobody could sleep by night or do anything by day. The Apostolic Nuncio pleaded with Noriega to leave. Noriega refused. His military training had prepared him for painfully irritating noises and he stood his ground.
He would bear it for 10 straight days. Then help came. Pope John Paul II placed a call to President Bush and told him to stop the music and to stop the violation of the Apostolic Nunciature.
President George Bush pretended not to know music was playing there and told the military, “what an irritating and petty thing you are doing there? Can you stop?”
They stopped, but by then the military had psychologically finished Noriega. He came out and was flown to the U.S. where he stood trial for drug trafficking, suppression of democracy, money laundering and racketeering.
He would serve 20 years in jail in America, before they extradited him to France to face another jail term and later to his country Panama where he died in 2017.
