This is the first I’ve read about this story of an American platoon of infantrymen in Panama in 1994 who tried to put down a riot by Cuban refugees at a containment camp on Empire Range in the Canal Zone. I was in college at the time, so I guess that’s why I missed it. But the whole story is at Stars & Stripes.
Apparently, Clinton, who lost a gubernatorial bid after Castro flooded Arkansas with refugees during the Mariel Boatlift, so he was gun shy about letting Cubans into the country. Instead he sent hundreds to a concentration camp in Panama, and then, not learning his lessons from Somalia, refused to allow the infantrymen keeping order in the camps to be armed properly.
When the Cubans rioted over rumors that they were being returned to Cuba, one infantry company of soldiers armed only with batons and plexiglass shields tried to quell the riot of hundreds of Cubans.
Amerine is now a lieutenant colonel at the Pentagon. He saw combat in Afghanistan in 2001 and led the Special Forces team that brought Afghan President Hamid Karzai into the country.
“When I saw real war later, at times I actually enjoyed it,” he said last week. “Being shot at was actually sometimes amusing. But when people are trying to stone you to death and people are falling and you’re just holding on to each other and marching through it, that’s totally different. It’s just primordial.”
That Third Way bullshit really was dangerous. But you should read the whole story.
Seems like the same kind of mentality permeated that administration. Waiting on Joey to show up to explain how America was never better, until The Won showed up.
Ugh…the Clinton years. No wonder the world thought we were weak.
There was a whole lot more than infantry involved. My MI buddies were over at the camps that day. In fact, as I remember it definitely went on for more than 20 minutes. The intense rock throwing may have been 20 minutes, but there was some more fighting and stolen hummers the 9th.
The worst part is the Cubans ate far better and were treated better than the troops at the camps. Nico’s cafe catered for the Cubans. The troops had DFAC food.
I wasn’t over there on those particular days. I only went over to the camps to repair communications equipment and computers. But, a lot of the guys coming back relayed stories about it.
I was one of the guys interviewed in this article. I am the one tht is rescued by greg roberts. The 20 minutes refers to us being trapped inside the camp until we could fight our way out. 3rd platoon was decimated. 2nd platoon finally was infiltrated and broke up only to be ravaged by the cubans. 1st platoon was the only group that stayed together. The videos showed the sky sunny and when the rocks came in the video went to grey like an avercast day. The rocks came in continuosly. Riot shields were blown up by the rocks. Alot of us had no shin gaurd protection and they would skip baseball size rocks into our legs. Blood was everywhere and on top of that we had cubans grabbing us out of ranks and we would have to stop and try and retrieve our captured Grunt. The story you see with the men interviewed have all seen heavy combat. I do not mean a little 3 hour fire fight either,but big time battles. We could not find Marion for the interview. Marion was in the blackhawk down fiasco with 10th mountain division. But all of us agree, we will take real combat over that day any time. How we got out of there is still a mystery and we laugh about it to this day. Also It was roughly 1500- 2000 cubans on the offensive,not 500. I think bill had a typo in that.