George Bush: The Unauthorized Biography - Get a Free Blog

the US population than George had been able to deliver. A further ingredient in the
dangerous dissatisfaction in Wall Street and environs was that Bush had botched and
bungled a US-sponsored coup d'etat against the Panamanian government loyal to Gen.
Manuel Antonio Noriega. Noriega's survival and continued defiance of Washington
seemed to certify, in the eyes of the ruling financiers, that Bush was indeed a wimp
incapable of conducting their international or domestic business. By November, 1989, the
ten-month old Bush regime was drifiting towards the Niagara of serious trouble. It was
under these circumstances that the Bush networks responded with their invasion of
Panama.
On October 3, 1989, several officers of the Panamanian Defense Forces under the
leadership of Major Moises Giroldi attempted to oust General Noriega and seize power.
The pro-golpe forces appear to have had Noriega in their physical control for a certain
period of time, and they were in contact with the US Southern Command in Panama City
through various channels. But they neither executed Noriega nor turned him over to the
US forces, and Noriega used the delay to rally the support of loyal troops in other parts of
Panama. The US forces mobilized, and blocked two roads leading towards the PDF
headquarters, just as they golpe leaders had requested. But the golpistas also wanted US
combat air support and would have required US ground forces to provide active
assistance. Bush stalled on these requests, and the golpe collapsed before Bush could
make up his mind what to do.
Bush's crisis management style was portrayed as an autocratic one-man show, with Bush
refusing to convoke the usual "excomm"-style crisis committee with representatives from
State, Defense, NSA, CIA, and other interested bureaucratic parties. Instead, Bush
reportedly insisted on being furnished with three parallel streams of reports from State,
Defense, and CIA. While he was puzzling over the conflicting evaluations, his coup team
was being rounded up and liquidated. It was worse than his blundering management of
the Sudan coup in 1985.
There are signs that the wide criticism of his botched handling of the coup, including
from such close allies as Skull and Bones Senator David Boren of Oklahoma, was an
excruciating personal humiliation for Bush. As the feared former boss of Langley, he was
supposedly a past master in subversion, putsches, and the toppling of governments
disobedient to Washington. His foreign policy credentials, touted as the strong suit in his
resume, were now fatally tarnished. According to some alleged insider accounts, US
forces had not rushed to the aid of the rebels because of reluctance and mistrust on the
part of US officers, starting with Gen. Thurman, the US commander in Panama.
Congressman Dave McCurdy of Oklahoma criticized Bush: "Yesterday makes Jimmy
Carter look like a man of resolve. There's a resurgence of the wimp factor." George Will
wrote a column entitled "An Unserious Presidency."
Bush hid from the press for 11 days after the golpe was crushed, but then had to face a
barrage of hostile questions anyway. Since he had urged the overthrow of Noriega, he
was asked, was it consistent not to back the rebels with US armed forces? Bush replied: