Casualties in Panama

Many still debate the true number of Panamanians who lost their lives in last December’s invasion. The exact answer is obvious and irrefutable: too many.

I went to Panama last February and visited a mass grave at the Jardin de Paz cemetery where the bodies of hundreds of “liberated” Panamanians were tossed into a pit and covered up. A woman mourning her husband told me he was buried there somewhere, thrown into the pit “like a dog.” Survivors could only guess where their loved one lay beneath the 100 by 18 foot rectangle of bare earth.

The U.S. military and Panama’s invasion-installed government admit to more than 500 killed, but many others say thousands more died. But the question goes beyond statistics. The invasion’s victims were people whose lives mattered. They died in their own homes in an invasion carried out by a foreign power.

DANIEL JAMES KLOOSTER, Los Angeles