Fort San Lorenzo, a ruined Spanish post high above the Canal Zone's Caribbean coast, was bright with brass one morning last week. To the strains of music from a military band some 500 senior officers from the U.S. and 18 Latin American countries munched doughnuts and sipped coffee, admired each other's uniforms (578 generals' and admirals' stars, in all), and kept a weather eye out to sea. Then from along the beach below, the shriek of jet planes and blast of simulated atomic bombs drowned out the music. As the planes carried out their make-believe destruction, nine waves of...
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