US aims toward Venezuela? The historical parallel is Panama– not Iraq

More than two decades ago, on January 24, 2004, I landed in Baghdad as a legal advisor, assigned an office in what was then known as the Green Zone. It was raining and cold, and my duffle bag was thrown into a puddle off the C-130 aircraft that had just done a corkscrew dive to reach the runway without risk of ground fire. Young American soldiers greeted me, as we piled into a vehicle, sped out of the airport complex and then along a road called the “Highway of Death” due to car bombs and snipers along the route.