Of course, some of that cash stuck to soldiers’ pockets

Let’s not be petty. Naturally somebody like Senator Joker Arroyo had to play the joker by lashing out at President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo for daring to earmark P600 million for the sending of a Philippine team to Iraq without the approval of Congress.

Susmariosep: Would dispatching 100 doctors and nurses in a humanitarian mission, plus peacekeepers in the form of 300 soldiers and 100 policemen, constitute an "act of war"? Or bust the budget?

I thought it was an act of help. Thanks to our politicians, we’re beginning to look like a "coalition of the nitpicking". Some other senators and congressmen, shooting from the lip, have been howling that the money to be spent in the Iraq expedition should, instead, be sent to Mindanao for the evacuees and other aid projects. The President said the other night, when we were together, that her government had been giving Mindanao and those in need very much more than that, and would continue to do more.

The complaints, in the end, were perceived to be mere grandstanding. In truth, if our congressmen and senators spent less on themselves and their pet projects obviously "in aid of re-election", we’d have additional billions to fund what’s really necessary for relief, development and progress.

Enough na. We’ve got to do our part when there’s an international crisis, or when our allies and friends need our participation. If we keep on having to defend such actions as being undertaken in exchange for an anticipated quid pro quo, we only succeed in making ourselves look selfish and mercenary. So why provoke such self-destructive and self-defeating rhetoric? If God (some sacrilegiously spell this out as Uncle Sam, shame on them!) blesses us for the good works we do, thank you. If not, our reward will be in heaven.

So, let’s get going. Cut out the ek-ek and the dak-dak. We’re late already. The next "war" may be about to begin: Meaning, the battle to keep the fanatical Shi’ites (so long cruelly suppressed by Saddam who smartly perceived them as a threat) from seizing power. Egged on by their Ayatollahs, they want to establish an Iranian-type fundamental Islamic State – it’s quite apparent.

Since 55 percent of the Iraqis, or almost 13 million, are Shi’ite Muslims, and only 42 percent (9.8 million) are Sunni Muslims, you can imagine, if the Ayatollahs and radical clerics are not stopped – forcibly, if necessary (it’s necessary, if you ask me) – they’ll soon grab power under the noses of the unwitting Americans and Brits. Then the world will see a powerful, well-funded, new troublemaker – drawing on the immense income from vast oil reserves potentially almost as rich as those of next-door Saudi Arabia to finance "terrorism". Not to mention, vituperative anti-Americanism.

Did you see the hundreds of thousands of Shi’ite "faithful" (pictured on television) pouring into their holy city of Karbala last Tuesday, beating their breasts in homage to the prophet’s "martyred" grandson, Hussein Ibn Ali, and bearing aloft black and green Islamic banners and portraits venerating Hussein who was slain by a hostile Muslim and infidel army in 680 A.D.? (Like our Holy Week flagellantes, many were flaying themselves and heavily bleeding as they roared out both adoration and defiance.) Even among the…uh "moderates", the chant was: "America get out, we’ll run Iraq ourselves."

Democracy? Are you kidding? Theocracy, that’s what.

Already, the Shia establishment is quietly, even sneakily, taking over the daily running of Iraq. Shia clerics from Kuts, the holy city of Najaf, and other centers of Islamic militancy, have sent out agents and theology students to take over hospitals, relief services, and escalate their own heavily-armed presence on the pretext of maintaining peace and order in the neighborhoods and "defending" communities from looters and other brigands. In sum, the Ayatollahs and the hawza, the clerical establishment are busily putting their "army" in place.

If the Americans and Brits don’t wake up and disarm these Islamic bullies, the fanatics will soon have the rest of the population cowed and "religious police", like the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) or Green Guards of Ayatollah Khomeini’s Iran, enforcing their own will.

* * *

Already, Washington DC has had to warn adjacent, very Shi’ite Iran, with its population of 62 million (and 518,000-strong armed forces, armed mostly with Russian-made weaponry and armor) not to meddle. It’s true enough that the Iranians are 51 percent Persians, and only three percent Arab, while the Iraqi Shi’ites are Arabs, but the tie of shared religion is strong.

When the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini returned from political asylum in France to whip up the religious mobs in late 1978, who would have expected the Shah-in-Shah, the Emperor Mohammad Reza Phalevi to be overthrown, despite his effective 400,000-man police force, and a merciless secret police, the Savak?

On January 16, 1979, the Shah fled the country. The Islamic revolution resulted in the collapse of the police, the army, the courts, the entire structure of state authority. The Reign of Terror lasted for almost ten years, with scores of thousands executed. Once-powerful army generals were "arrested" and ended up as corpses on marble slabs. Every "suspect" was tortured and killed for violations of Islamic law or "treason". The US Embassy was attacked on February 14, 1979, as well as the US Consulate in Tabriz in the west. On November 4 that same year, radical militants – backed by the Iranian government – finally overran the American Embassy in Tehran and took 53 Americans there captive.

The hostage crisis lasted 444 days, reaping frontpage banner headlines and embarrassing the United States as wishy-washy and powerless. A clumsy "rescue" operation, launched by the Jimmy Carter administration in April 1980, ended disastrously with an inexplicable accident in the desert, resulting in the death of eight American servicemen (Rangers and Delta Force), and the burning to cinders of one EC-130 airplane, one RH-53D helicopter, plus the abandonment of six RH-53D helicopters.

The Ayatollah Khomeini gleefully exhibited the charred bodies of the US personnel who had died in those collisions (they hadn’t even been attacked) as proof that the Great Satan was trying to destroy Iran!

"Operation Eagle Claw" became a synonym for failure and humiliation.

Will "Operation Iraqi Freedom" end up the same way? If the Yanks don’t spot the induced desert "sandstorm" coming, and nip the "big wind" aborning, it will. How? Sorry. But only force can meet and overcome force.

Saddam Insane wasn’t that stupid. He felt it essential to keep the Shi’ites in check but deplorably utilized the most violent and bloodiest methods. I think that bomb or cruise missile, whatever it was pulverized the Baghdad restaurant in which he was located, really got him. Otherwise his Iraqi Republican Guards and other forces wouldn’t have disintegrated so quickly. It’s impossible to "bring him back". But while he was a monster and a despot, ole Saddam did establish a secular state. This is why the Iraqis were the most "modern", educated, and free-wheeling in their part of the world. The women didn’t have to wear the black abaya, the burqa or the veil. Or cower in some bleak corner avoiding the gaze of men. Iraqi society wasn’t burdened by the dead hand of religious fanaticism or fundamentalism. Have the Yanks and Brits now let that genie out of the bottle?

Abangan.

* * *

The assaults – launched last Thursday by 500 fighters of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) in Naigo town in Lanao del Norte, in which 12 civilians were slain but seven MILF insurgents were also killed as well as 300 civilians held hostage – demonstrate anew that the rebels have to be defeated and disarmed, not wooed with fruitless and endless "peace negotiations". (The toll may rise as the fight is still on-going.)

The marauders were apparently trying to interdict and block the 400 kilometer highway between Iligan City and Zamboanga. They failed to do so, but had to be repulsed in bloody fashion. (GMA knows that area very intimately. As a young girl, she had lived in Iligan for five years.)

The President, from our conversations, seems to be on the verge of realizing that appeasement won’t work. "Peace at any price" is always the argument of the spineless Surrender Gang and the peaceniks. Purchasing peace at the price demanded by the Moro rebels is too exorbitant. And it won’t last long enough for the ink to dry on any agreement. As long as there are thousands of armed guerrillas or "militants" roaming around free, there is grist for thousands of incidents, incursions, killings, kidnappings and rapes. Even if, say, MILF Chieftain Hashim Salamat were to sign a peace deal, he could never enforce it among his sub-commanders and cadres. There’s only one answer in Mindanao: Enforce the law. Disarm everybody. Religion may be the excuse for waging war, but raw power to control, extort, blackmail and, yes, rule is what’s really at stake.

Even Governor Imelda Dimaporo of Lanao del Norte was just plain disgusted by the MILF depredations.

As usual, the army will be blamed by the gullible and the incorrigible for having "provoked" the Moro rebels by their attacks on rebel strongholds and their military "offensives". Sanamagan: Those fellows don’t need to be provoked. Rebellion, bullying, extortion, and creating mayhem in general – that is their profession. And what’s their unbending demand when we parley for a stupid "peace agreement"? That we surrender a big part, if not all, of Mindanao to them. That’s too steep a price for a "peace" we won’t get anyway. They’d simply use any expanded territory to wage a wider war.

* * *

Last Tuesday, when the news was flashed that US servicemen, led by two Marine sergeants, had discovered more than $550 million in cash – yes, dollars – stashed away in aluminium cases in sites near one of Saddam’s Baghdad palace complexes in central Baghdad, there was a wave of admiration for the "honesty" of the grunts and Jarheads who had found the cache and yet turned the money in.

I quipped, when I met US Ambassador Francis J. Ricciardone that evening, that if the soldiers who had uncovered then turned in such a huge amount had been Filipino troops, our malicious society (and media) would immediately begin asking: Where’s the other $650 million?

US military investigators, it’s now apparent, asked that same, identical question. Investigators found clues indicating that hundreds of thousands of dollars, maybe even millions more, had been ripped off the pile of $100 bills from various containers. The US Army Criminal Investigation is grilling five soldiers, and the inquiry may be further expanded. Two of those being investigated are a senior sergeant and an officer.

Guess the temptation is too great when there’s money in piles to be had for the taking. Some of the cash manages, somehow, to stick to the fingers of "lucky" fortune-finders.

Oh, well. At least in the US military, they ask probing and nasty questions and thoroughly investigate such matters.

In our armed forces, we‘re still trying to figure out WHAT HAPPENED to the P1 billion – yep, a billion bucks – in emergency "anti-insurgency funds" granted by former President Joseph "Erap" Estrada to the Department of Defense and the armed forces at the height of the drive against the MILF camps a few years ago. Only a tiny fraction of this amount seems to have reached the men on the ground and in the front of the firefight. Where did, say, P950 million or more go? That’s not salami. More will surface later, mark my words.

THE ROVING EYE…Yesterday’s pro-Balikatan rally in Jolo, right in front of city hall, demonstrates that contrary to the black propaganda being disseminated many Suluanos are in favor of the Americans coming to Sulu for joint exercises with our Armed Forces. What is being stressed, of course, is the humanitarian and medical assistance being delivered up front by the Americans. The rally, I was told by Titing, my special correspondent in our southern archipelago, was led by Gov. Yusoph Jikiri himself and Congressman Munir Arbison (2nd District). All the 18 municipalities of Sulu, Titing reported, were represented in the demonstration. This should belie the misperception being actively propagated by radical groups, particularly Abu Sayyaf sympathizers that the Sulu people don’t want the Americans to take part in Balikatan…Our Ambassador to Washington Albert del Rosario met with me yesterday to personally deny what Pentagon sources had passed on to me. He insisted that he had never told US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld that the Suluanos nurtured hostility to the Yanks owing to bad memories about Gen. John Pershing. Anyway, Del Rosario offered to transmit to me certain portions of the meetings he had with Rumsfeld which are not classified.