Operation Just Cause

During the administration of American President George H. W. Bush, Operation Just Cause was the invasion of Panama which deposed Manuel Noriega in December 1989.

H-Hour was 0045 hours, 20 December 1989. Over three hundred aircraft moved troops, attacked targets or provided other support. Twenty-four thousand U.S. troops were deployed against the sixteen thousand members of the Panama Defense Force.

The Panamanian force was quickly incapacitated. Senior officers were killed, captured, or more commonly abandoned their men. The attack touched off fires and looting by impoverished Panamanians.

The operation quickly proceeded and decentralized resistance, criminal activity and the hunt for Noriega replaced clear-cut initial objectives.

By January, combat forces had begun to withdraw and reconstruction of the Panamanian government began under the name Operation Promote Liberty. The Americans lost twenty-three killed and 324 wounded. Panamanian deaths are more difficult to calculate. The Defense Forces lost 314 dead, and another two hundred civilians are known to have died, although this number may not include people in destroyed buildings whose bodies were never recovered.

Planned under the name Blue Spoon the actual invasion incorporated elements of the Nifty Package and Acid Gambit plans.

Two years after the invasion thousands of Panamians "marked the day with a 'black march' through the streets of this capital to denounce the US invasion and the Endara economic policies", the French press agency reported. They also claimed that US troops had killed 3000 people and buried many corpses in mass graves or thrown them into the sea. This is widely disputed among Panamanians. The "black march" was funded and organized by a private French group.

See Blade Jewel, Nimrod Dancer, Purple Storm, Prayer Book and Sand Flea.