LuisTeodoro.com

Neither Julius Caesar nor Attila the Hun had to worry about the news media, but George W. Bush apparently does. In the memory banks of his officials, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and his fellow unilateralists and world conquerors, are remembrances of Vietnam past, among them the conviction that the United States lost the war in 1975 because of the six o’clock news and the early morning edition.
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The Philippine government declared last week its support for the US attack on Iraq after a few days of feigned agony over the issue. That its agony was feigned was evident from President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo’s statements, made since a month ago, that were clearly supportive of the US position on the Iraqi crisis.
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Over television the other day I saw a newsbar report in which Senator Joker Arroyo was quoted as saying that the United States did not have anything to do with the “regime change” in 1986 that overthrew Ferdinand Marcos and put Corazon Aquino in Malacanang.
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In its attempt to fig-leaf its illegal war on Iraq by making it look like the work of a coalition rather than a unilateral drive for world dominance, the United States government now claims that several countries have joined the “coalition of the willing” but do not want to be identified. Those countries were not on the list of 30 countries the US State Department released March 18.
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President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo announced the other day during a TV interview that the Philippine government had created a P500 million fund. Called the Mindanao Peace and Development Fund, Mrs. Arroyo made it clear that the Fund would be used for—war.

The Fund, she said during its Malacañang launch in a speech worthy of Orwell’s 1984, would be “a big step” in fighting “terrorism” because it would make the Armed Forces and the police “even more effective.”
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President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo’s TV interview on Saturday revealed that an immediate halt to the fighting in Mindanao is not on the government agenda.

Asked about her reaction to the urging of several groups, including the Catholic Church, that the government and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) resume the on-again-off-again peace negotiations, Mrs. Arroyo responded by saying that the majority of Filipinos favor war with the MILF, and she has to do “what is popular.”
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As the Arroyo administration talks peace while waging war in Mindanao, it is tempting to conclude that the only offense it’s guilty of is policy incoherence and operational incompetence.

Is what we are witnessing today in Mindanao first of all the result of a failure of analysis as well as intelligence (in the sense of IQ levels and reliable information)?
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