George Bush: The Unauthorized Biography - Get a Free Blog

Marlin Fitzwater was to minimize this declaration: "I don't think anybody here considers
it important enough in terms of impact," Fitzwater told the White House press corps. It
was only after Bush had given the final order to attack that it was discovered that this
statement had been another casus belli.
At this point, the US provocation activity was stepped up, with special attention given to
the approaches to Noriega's headquarters, the Commandancia. Here, at the Avenue A
PDF checkpoint, on the evening of Saturday, December 16, Navy Lieutenant Adam J.
Curtis and his wife Bonnie had been detained as they chose to take an evening stroll in
this very tense and highly sensitive neighborhood. Their presence could in no way have
been interpreted as purely casual. Then, while Lieutenant and Mrs. Curtis were having
their identity checked by the PDF, a car occupied by four other "off-duty" American
officers in civilian clothes drove up. These officers would later say that they had taken a
wrong turn towards Noriega's Commandancia, where the cat and mouse game of wouldbe
kidnappers and their prey was known to go on at all hours. These US officers alleged
that the PDF guards had ordered them to get out of their car at gunpoint. But the US
officers also admitted that they attempted to depart from the area of the PDF checkpoint
at high speed, and it is not clear in which direction they were headed. The US officers' car
did succeed in departing the scene. At this point, according to the US account, the PDF
guards opened fire and wounded Marine Lieutenant Robert Paz, who is later reported to
have died of his wounds at the US Gorgas Military Hospital. Another US officer in the
car was reportedly slightly wounded in the leg.
When Lieutenant and Mrs. Curtis were released by the PDF some four hours later, they
alleged that Lieutenant Curtis had been beaten, and Mrs. Curtis fondled and sexually
threatened by the PDF. These details, which may have been purely invented, were
obsessively seized upon by Bush in his public justifications of the US invasion. Published
accounts indicate that the public affairs officer of the US Southern Command suggested
that Lieut. Curtis be interviewed on television to recount his story, but that this idea had
been quickly vetoed by Defense Secretary Cheney, suggesting that the US command
authority had its doubts about Curtis's ability to tell a tale useful for the Bush regime's
propaganda mill. [fn 44]
With the incidents at Avenue A, the imposing "mind war" and "mind control" apparatus
of the US regime went into action. Here Bush was taking a leaf from the book of his
father's protege, Adolf Hitler. When Hitler had wished to invade Poland, he first
completed his military preparations and then staged the infamous provocation codenamed
Operation Canned Meat at the Gleiwitz radio station on the German side of the
border with Poland. The Nazis took some German convicts from a jail, murdered them,
and then dressed them in Polish uniforms. These bodies were then presented to the press
as the result of a murderous Polish raid across the border. Within hours, Hitler had issued
an early-morning declaration of war. Bush showed that his pedigree had been acquired in
the same school.
Bush gave the final order for the attack on Sunday, December 17. He made a series of
raving statements about the alleged sexual molestation of Mrs. Curtis, and it was evident