We Are All Sitting Ducks Now

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Manila is on "Full Red Alert" as authorities announced the possibility of a "spill-over effect" from the ongoing operations in Basilan and Sulu.

"Full Red Alert" means women entering shopping malls and mass transit systems will get chopsticks poked into their handbags and men get politely felt up their backsides by embarrassed security guards. (Embarrassed becaue they know how futile and porous their procedures really are.)

Of course it is a real joke at sea ports and boarding areas for the country's thousands of inter-island vessels and maritime transport hubs, bus stations and bustling public markets, where of course, we have had a series of terrorist attacks over the years. For example, Rizal Day 2000 Bombing of the Manila LRT by JI--32 dead; the Super Ferry 14 bombing in 2004 by ASG/RSM--126 dead; and the dozens of bombings at ports, bus depots, markets, bars, and just the other day, Pershing Plaza in Zamboanga City, 14 injured, to remind everyone how conscious of History these particular terrorists are.

Please notice that none of these terrorist-induced civilian deaths and injuries should be called "collateral damage" because although a terrorist attack is generally indiscriminate the damage is always "intentional."

Intentional also was the ambuscade and killing of fourteen Philippine Marines searching for kidnapped Italian priest, Giancarlo Bossi, near Tipo-tipo, Basilan on July 10, 2007 by members and friends of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF), which owned up to and never has denied it carried out the deadly attack. On its website, the MILF even claimed the real number of soldiers they killed was 23 and not just 14, but the rebel group also listed accurately the arms, weapons and ammunition they took from the soldiers. The MILF denied in its post having anything to do with the subsequent torture and beheading of ten of the 14 Marines, claiming it did not know their identities but reporting one of the "field commanders" as reporting the "deep hatred" in the eyes of the beheaders as they hacked off human heads, fingers and sexual organs to get at necklaces, wedding rings and cell phones, which they then used to send taunting text to grieving wives and children of the dead Marines.

Speaking of taunting text to grieving wives and children of dead Marines, check out the kind of headlines that the Philippine Daily Innuendo and other "peace advocates" have been "texting" by the hundreds of thousands during the last few weeks (and the answer of the Marines!)

Since July 10, over fifty Philippines soldiers have been killed in action against MILF forces in Basilan, MNLF forces in Sulu, and now ASG forces in Basilan again.

In a shameless editorial this week and in big bold headlines, PDI called the slain soldiers' sacrifice a case of "WASTED LIVES." although of course they put these very words in the mouths and hide behind the skirts of "Church and political leaders, civic and women’s groups" to take such cheap potshots.

The editorial is actually a model for all young leftist propagandists in training because of the sophisticated manner of delivering the worst possible messages about the military and the government to the detriment of the troops, whilst actually sounding Concerned with a Capital C. For example to make the downright nasty suggestion that young soldiers are being sent to their deaths on "test missions" the editorial craftily quotes an officer who speaks only on condition of anonymity.

But listen to the interview of Pia Hontiveros with Senator Rodolfo Biazon, Chairman of the Senate Defense Committee and Marine Commandant Nelson Allaga about much of the drivel 'n snivel in the editorial. They spoke at Marine HQ last Monday where 13 of 15 Marines slain in capturing an ASG encampment during a fierce gunbattle that saw 42 ASG killed.



Sen. Biazon makes the forceful point that backing down as the "peace advocates" demand would mean surrendering to the terrorists and reneging on our solemn duty to uphold the law, bring to justice murderers and beheaders, and to secure Philippine sovereignty against what may be more than local rebels altogether.



Allaga addresses the issue of "young soldiers" in battle, among many other aspects of the ongoing law enforcement operations to serve those 130 arrest warrants.


Above, the sister, wife, father and girlfriend of some of the "wasted lives" prove the simple nobility of simple folks as compared to those fancy editors at their desks of inhuman disdain.

Ellen Tordesillas has a piece on the relief of the Basilan ground commander, Col. Romero Alivio, in which the significant and tantalizing substance is Alivio After Battle Report, which confirms the earlier suggestion that combat air support for the ambushed Marines was ordered to stand down (probably by the Peace Negotiators, Dureza and Gen. Garcia) because they were engaging "friendly forces", their partners in the peace process, the MILF.

Three weeks after the Tipo-tipo ambuscade by the MILF, Basilan Regional Trial Court Judge Leo Principe issued arrest warrants for some 130 suspects, almost all of them known MILF members and the soldati of local warlords and politicians, based on evidence and testimony gathered from locals and witnesses and his finding of probable cause.

Just as police were going to serve those arrest warrants however, here come Jess Dureza (Presidential Adviser to the Peace Process) and Gen. Rodolfo Garcia, Chief Peace Negotiator. They SET ASIDE, on the President's say so, the serving of the arrest warrants, and spend a whole week whitewashing and exonerating the MILF in public, and then blaming the whole Tipo-tipo incident on "lawless elements" of the Abu Sayyaf Group. They were clearly trying to save the MILF so that the peace deal they are cooking up, in which a Muslim Juridical Entity will be setup as a new homeland for JI and Al Qaed--err, the Bangsamoro People.

Thus when the President declared "all-out war" last week, it was "all-out war" against the Abu Sayyaf bandit group. In their "Independent Fact Finding committee report" which has not been released to the public, Dureza, Garcia and MILF's Iqbal determine that four Abu Sayyaf bandits did the beheadings while six looked on.

There is no "all out war" on either MILF or the MNLF, even though they admitted killing those fourteen Marines in Basilan and 10 more in Maimbung, Sulu, respectively.

I guess this really means we are all sitting ducks now because the MILF's Iqbal was right, when he commented recently in Malaysia after Peace Talks were postponed, that the Philippine Government lacks "coordination," smiling mysteriously and smugly.

I took that to mean that the MILF does not suffer from such a lack of "coordination" with its own Base and that they are playing everyone like a fiddle: the Government, the Media, the Military. The terrorists have almost everybody convinced that it is OUR fault there is WAR.

But I think the peace process is dead, because the Moro cause has already been hijacked by the Global Jihad, and there most certainly is not negotiation with that. This hypothesis will be tested in the level of violence and terrorist attacks in the next few months. I hope it is wrong, but signs are already pointing the other way, as in that fundraising video deployed by the ASG on YouTube and broadcast all over the Muslim World.

I wonder what Mssrs. Dulmatin, Umar Patek and Zulkifli Abdhir are doing at this very moment?