New ‘Weapon’ Blasts Noriega: Bush’s Speeches

If the Bobby Fuller Four singing “I Fought the Law and the Law Won” over and over and over won’t drive Manuel A. Noriega out of the sanctuary of the Vatican’s embassy here, American military psychological experts may think they can bore him into giving up.

“We’re hitting him with President Bush’s speeches now,” said an Army sergeant from Chicago who was standing guard at a road barricade a block from the Vatican mission, where Noriega has been a refugee since Christmas Eve.

“I don’t know about Noriega, but listening to his (Bush’s) speeches all day long is driving me (batty),” said the bedraggled and grimy soldier, who is a military policeman with the 82nd Airborne Division.

Another soldier was heard to mutter: “This is like being trapped in an elevator with a busted Muzak machine. I ain’t getting much sleep.”

The introduction of Bush oratory over the blaring loudspeaker system is the newest ingredient in the mind games that American forces are using to harass both Noriega and the diplomats who are providing him refuge from his American pursuers.

Starting three days ago, U.S. troops have been playing rap songs, heavy metal and traditional rock ‘n’ roll, mostly with titles and lyrics with less-than-subtle messages. Sometimes it is Linda Ronstadt belting out “You’re No Good,” and sometimes Michael Jackson’s “Beat It” fills the air.

After U.S. officials asserted that Noriega had a fixation on witchcraft, the makeshift radio network introduced the late rocker Jimi Hendrix singing “Voodoo Child.”

At the distance reporters are kept away from the embassy, it is difficult to make out which Bush speeches are being played; all that is certain is that the high volume and poor sound quality gives the president’s nasal voice a screeching tone.

The sergeant said that he hadn’t been told anything about the Bush sound track, but it evidently includes statements criticizing the ousted Panamanian dictator.

In reality, the music and the speeches, which also are aimed at preventing broadcast journalists from listening in on military radio conversations, probably bother American soldiers guarding the area more than anyone inside the embassy.

The structure, an old, solidly constructed mansion, has thick walls and shuttered windows that likely filter out most outside sounds.

The odd, even surreal quality of the broadcasts fits in nicely with the character of the general scene around the embassy, which is located in an upscale neighborhood of high-rise apartments and a hotel once used as the Panamanian army’s press center.

The approaching streets are blockaded by Sheridan tanks with their 105-millimeter cannons pointing at the small crowds of Panamanians and reporters who gather daily nearby. Barbed wire stretches across the streets, and troops in full battle gear turn back traffic and keep the people at bay.

But the menacing weapons and the barricades haven’t soured the mood of the people who spend the day looking on and applauding every American helicopter gunship that passes overhead. They cheer every U.S. military convoy that drives in and out of the makeshift siege line.

The already popular American soldiers endear themselves even more by handing out Army meal kits called MREs, officially named Meals Ready to Eat but less officially called Meals Rejected by Ethiopia.

The crowds range from about 25 people to a high of a couple of hundred. They stand alternately in the sun or the daily rain that falls in the afternoon, munching on MREs or ice cream bars sold from a pushcart. Somehow, they ignore the smell that wafts in from fetid mud flats that line nearby Panama Bay.

Some people carry signs urging all sorts of horrible fates for their one-time leader, while others approach journalists to say how happy they are to be occupied by the American military.

“Noriega is no political refugee, he is a criminal,” reads a torn bedsheet draped across a sidewalk railing. “Noriega must be hanged, not exiled,” says another.

A favorite insignia on the signs is a diagonal black line drawn across a pineapple, a reference to Noriega’s complexion, which is so deeply pockmarked that it resembles the rough-skinned fruit.

When a television camera is pointed at the crowd, invariably someone throws a pineapple to the ground and stomps on it.

While the mood is jovial, it often evolves into a kind of unthinking giddiness.

“See that! Look at that!” complained a heavyset woman, her brightly dyed red hair shaking with anger as she pointed to a light scratch on the skin above her right knee. “Noriega did that. You should hang him.” Then she giggled.

Alicia Menija, a self-proclaimed 29-year-old “beauty consultant,” approached a reporter and asked if he was an American. When told yes, she enfolded him in her arms and said, “I love Americans. Can you buy me lunch?”

The soldiers, most of whom keep a good humor through all of this, are constantly bombarded with requests to pose with onlookers for pictures. When they say yes to one person, groups suddenly crowd through the gaps in the barbed wire and close in on the troops and clamber onto the tanks and other vehicles.

According to Sgt. Cowan Dale, a 26-year-old military policeman from Socorro, N.M., no one has tried seriously to break through the lines--”only a drunk or some confused person. We just turn them around.”