PANAMA CITY — Manuel Noriega, the brash former dictator of Panama and sometime ally of the United States whose ties to drug trafficking led to his ouster in 1989 in what was then the largest American military action since the Vietnam War, has died. Gen. Noriega had been in intensive care at a public hospital since March 7 after complications developed from surgery to remove what his lawyer described as a benign brain tumor. While imprisoned abroad he suffered strokes, hypertension and other ailments, his lawyers said. After returning to Panama on Dec.