Before Saddam Hussein there was Manuel Noriega. Like Saddam, Noriega enjoyed US support until he turned into a wayward ally, then an embarrassment, and finally an "imminent danger" who had to be overthrown.

Noriega was recruited as a CIA informant while studying at a military academy in Peru. He received intelligence and counterintelligence training at the School of the Americas at Fort Gulick, Panama, in 1967, as well as a course in psychological operations at Fort Bragg, North Carolina. He was to remain on the CIA payroll until February 1988.

After a military coup in 1968, Noriega quickly rose through the ranks and became head of Panama's military intelligence and a key figure under General Omar Torrijos, the military ruler who signed a treaty with the US to restore the Panama canal zone to Panamanian sovereignty in 1977.

After Torrijos's death in a mysterious plane crash in 1981, Noriega consolidated his power, becoming Panama's de facto ruler, promoting himself to full general in 1983.

Noriega made himself valuable to the US during the Contra wars when he allowed the US to set up listening posts in Panama and by helping the US campaign against the leftist Sandinista regime in Nicaragua. Noriega allowed Panama to be used as a conduit for US money and weapons for the Contras as then US president Ronald Reagan sought to undermine the Sandinistas. But Noriega's increasing brutality turned him into a liability, especially after the assassination of Hugo Spadafora, a political opponent who was found beheaded in 1985.