In December 1989, the United States invades Panama to remove Manuel Noriega, a former CIA asset turned drug-trafficking dictator, in an operation the Pentagon names Operation Just Cause. This film built by Barbara Trent and the Empowerment Project questions that name, laying out evidence that the real motives involved control of the Panama Canal treaties and Noriega's usefulness running out rather than any sudden concern for democracy. It uses invasion footage, interviews with journalists, soldiers, and Panamanian survivors, and Pentagon press briefings to track how the military pool system controlled what reporters could see and file, keeping independent camera crews away from the bombed Chorrillo neighborhood while officials disputed civilian death counts that outside investigators put far higher than the government's figures. The film closes on Congress cheering news of a "liberated Panama," set against the footage of mass graves and displaced families it has just shown. The gap between that applause and the ground-level evidence is the argument the whole film is making.