January 3 Is A Black Day For Dictators

In various years, the U.S. has eliminated key adversaries on this very day

Jan. 3 was proving to be an ill-fated day for some opponents of the United States, writes CNN.

Exactly 36 years ago, Panama's military leader Manuel Noriega left the Vatican embassy in Panama City, where he was taking refuge, and surrendered to U.S. forces. He was flown to the United States, where he went on trial on drug trafficking charges.

The capture of Noriega and his delivery to the United States - in an operation dubbed Operation Just Cause - is being called the latest case in which a de facto ruler of a state has been detained by U.S. forces in his own country. (Noriega was head of the Panama Defense Forces, not president, but ruled the country de facto.)

Like Nicolas Maduro, he was accused of collaborating with Colombian drug cartels and acting as a middleman in smuggling cocaine into the United States. In 1988, a federal grand jury in Florida indicted Noriega on drug trafficking charges.

Then-U.S. President George H.W. Bush, Sr. Citing the need to protect American citizens and fight drugs, ordered U.S. troops into Panama on December 20, 1989.

After receiving a reduced sentence, Noriega spent 17 years in prison before serving time in France and Panama before passing away.

Noriega and Maduro are not the only figures the U.S. has taken action against on this day of the calendar. Six years ago, Donald Trump's first administration carried out a pinpoint strike in Baghdad that killed one of the Iranian regime's most powerful figures, Kassem Suleimani.

Suleimani was the head of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps' special Quds Force and the architect of Tehran's proxy conflicts in the Middle East. The same strike also killed Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, deputy head of the Iran-backed Iraqi Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF).

The Pentagon held Suleimani responsible for attacks on coalition bases in Iraq, including an attack that killed a U.S. contractor, as well as the storming of the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad.

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