All a dictator needs is funding, arming, and a minority population to rally around him...like Saddam and his minority Sunni power base in Iraq...the Shah of Iran and his familial and cluster of economic and social elite who benefitted from his push to power atop an American funded and planned coup.
Look at the School of the Americas....look at the list of graduates and then look into the nations of Central and South America...look at the ranking officers....look at men like Manuel Noriega.....
"Regional influences, both political and criminal, fueled the explosive growth of drug trafficking through Honduras in the early 1980's. In 1980 and 1981, for example, the head of military intelligence in Panama, then Col. Manuel Noriega, teamed up with his counterpart at the head of the Honduran G-2, Col. Torres, to smuggle first arms(on behalf of Marxist rebels in El Salvador) and then drugs.."
(Both men are graduates of the School of the Americas)
"Noriega was originally recruited as an agent by the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency in 1959, while still a young military cadet studying in Peru"
(how does a man from Peru become the president of Panama?)
"He went on the CIA's payroll in 1967. The next year, a military coup assisted by the U.S. Army's 470th Military Intelligence Group gave Noriega his opportunity to take charge of Panama's own G-2. His new job made him a priceless source for the American services, which used Panama as a listening post for much of Latin American."
(as well as ensuring its control of the most important canal system arguably on the planet, as well as enabling American multinational corporations with major land holdings throughout Central American, including Panama, to keep control)
"In August 1986, only two months after Noriega's battering in the American media, North (Marine Col. Oliver North) and the CIA's Duane Clarridge discussed a request from Noriega for help in countering his bad publicity in return for assassinating the Sandinista leadership....Within days, North gave his approval for a public relations firm, which handled much of North's fundraising for the Contras, to represent Panamanian government interests. And North met with Noriega that September, with National Security Advisor John Pointdexter's approval, to review sabotage missions in Nicaragua."
So, this is how one gets to be a dictator, and how one can keep such power....
How does one lose it?
"Noriega lost his most ardent defenders within the (Reagan) administration, North and Casey, when the Iran-Contra scandal blew up in November 1986. As the whole White House program of covert support for the Contras came crashing down, Noriega suddenly became expendable. In January 1987, the Costa Rican government extradited Floyd Carlton to the United States, triggering the events that led to Noriega's indictment in Miami in early 1988."
"Noriega's alleged drug dealing was 'relatively small by Latin American standards'(New York Times)" and in the words of a State Department official, "We don't know anything today (early 1988) about Tony Noriega (not Manuel?) that we didn't know a year ago. What's changed is the politics and Panama, not Tony Noriega."
I will close with this segment...
"Perhaps the most striking evidence of a political double standard was the silence of the Bush administration on the composition of the post-invasion regime (in Panama). The U.S. installed president of Panama, Guillermo Endara, had been a director and secretary of Banco Interoceanico, targeted by the FBI and DEA, and named by Floyd Carlton (the man who spilled the beans on Noriega) as a major front for laundering Colombian drug money. The bank reportedly served both the Cali and Medellin cartels. Endara's business partner, Carlos Eleta, who reportedly laundered CIA funds into Endara's presidential campaign in the spring of 1989 was arrested that year in Georgia for allegedly conspiring to import more than a half ton of cocaine into the United States each month. Prosecutors dropped the indictment following the invastion (of Panama), citing lack of evidence."
Mugabe crazy? How much American CIA-delivered dollars did he stuff away....that his family still holds on to. I can get that information..there is actually a great publication entitled "Still Waiting for the Jubillee: Pragmatic Solutions to the Third World Debt Crisis".. I have it in my car..
Check it out....
http://www.worldwatch.org/node/835..you can't read it at this site...but from this it can probably be found...
another is "Cocaine Politics" by Peter Scott and Jonathan Marshall
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