WASHINGTON TIMES EDITORIAL: Obama the sanitizer

Somebody at the National Security Council dropped the ball. On Thursday, President Obama is welcoming Philippine President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo to the White House for his presidency's first visit by a Southeast Asian leader. The choice of Mrs. Arroyo for this honor was a mistake because Mr. Obama is being used to give political cover for the Philippine president's troubles back home.

Mrs. Arroyo's domestic political position is precarious. A poll released June 8 by the Pulse Asia polling firm pegged Mrs. Arroyo's public approval at only 26 percent. Street demonstrations against her are routine and growing in size. These protests are in response to a dubious mandate following a dirty 2004 election and numerous allegations of corruption against her family and administration. Her husband, Mike Arroyo, has left the country and used doctors' notes to say he is too ill to obey court summons related to corruption charges.

The Philippines has become less free during Mrs. Arroyo's 10-year presidency. According to Freedom House, "Corruption is extensive throughout the Philippine state apparatus, from the lowest to the highest levels. Bribes and extortion seem to be a regular element of the complex connections among bureaucrats, politicians, businessmen, the press and the public." In Transparency International's 2008 Corruption Perceptions Index, the Philippines ranked 141st out of 180 nations on a list in which No. 1 is the least corrupt. The level of Philippine corruption is tied with Iran and Yemen and worse than in dodgy places such as Libya and Nigeria.

The corruption problem is affecting Manila's relationship with other allies. A senior Philippine official told The Washington Times that German Chancellor Angela Merkel sent Mrs. Arroyo an ultimatum last month that Berlin-Manila ties are at risk if the Philippines doesn't pay $60 million owed to the German government for Manila's new international airport. The Philippine government seized the airport and refused to pay a German company -- which is partly owned by the German state -- for its construction after revelations that the contract allegedly was laden with millions in bribes and kickbacks.

There are also serious human-rights abuses in the archipelago. According to the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists, "The Philippines ranks sixth worldwide among countries that fail to prosecute cases of journalists killed for their work." Between 1992 and 2008, at least 34 journalists were murdered in the Philippines; there were convictions in only three of these cases. Four more members of the press were killed this June alone. Opposition voices regularly disappear as well.

On top of all this are machinations by Mrs. Arroyo to cling to power by setting aside next May's presidential election. The president and her allies are pushing to amend the Philippine constitution to change the current U.S.-style presidential system into a parliamentary system whereby Mrs. Arroyo could serve as prime minister. This would allow her to circumvent the presidential term limit which prevents her from staying in office. This move, incidentally, is similar to the strategy strongman Ferdinand Marcos used to stay in power after declaring martial law in 1972.

The relationship between Washington and Manila is an old and important one. After the U.S. victory in the Spanish-American war in 1898, the Philippine islands were a U.S. colony for half a century and have remained a close ally in the six decades since independence was granted in 1946. The current Visiting Forces Agreement between the two countries allows U.S. troops on Philippine soil to help in the war on terrorism and to assist the Philippines with its fight against Islamic insurrection in the southern islands.

But the nation should be differentiated from its lame-duck leader. Welcoming Mrs. Arroyo to the White House only validates her troubled rule. (Washington Times)


Link:http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2009/jul/26/obama-the-sanitizer/

Inside the Ring: The Washington Times

Pacific terrorism

U.S. special operations forces in the Pacific have made significant progress in the past year battling the al Qaeda-linked Abu Sayyaf terrorist group in the Philippines.

"Abu Sayyaf ... has been mitigated very successfully by the government of the Philippines and their security forces," said a senior officer of the Special Operations Command-Pacific, known as SOC-PAC, which is supporting operations against the Islamist group.

"In the past year, several of their key leaders have been killed."
The officer said during a background briefing in Honolulu, where the SOC-PAC has its headquarters, that the remaining Abu Sayyaf members are divided and fighting among themselves over who will replace leaders who have been killed.

Additionally, electronic "chatter" picked up from the group about plans for attacks against Filipino and U.S. targets revealed that "it's just that, chatter," the officer said, noting that in the past such chatter has led to actual attacks.

"So their ability to turn chatter into action has been substantially mitigated in the past year," the officer said.

The officer would not say that the group has been defeated, but another sign of its growing weakness as an Islamist terrorist force is that many members of Abu Sayyaf are turning themselves in to Philippines authorities.

"This is a great success for the Philippine government," he said, noting that many were disarmed, debriefed and reintegrated back into society. Some received cash rewards for giving up their Abu Sayyaf membership.

The success against Abu Sayyaf is an indirect result of U.S. special forces troops — Army, Air Force and Navy commandos — who helped train and assist Filipino security forces. A key element of the assistance has been the provision of military equipment and intelligence.

A second major U.S. special operations effort in the Pacific is support to the Indonesian government in battling another al Qaeda-linked group, Jemaah Islamiyah, that operates throughout Southeast Asia.

Jemaah Islamiyah "is a little tougher target because Indonesia, unlike Philippines, is a Muslim country," the officer said.

"In Indonesia the difficulty is that the government is playing hardball against this group but at the same time is catering to the ideological bent of the society," the officer said, noting that a lot of "empathy" for the group exists in Indonesia, making countering it more difficult.

Pacific Command-based special operations commandos currently are working with local forces in Bangladesh, Cambodia, Indonesia, Malaysia, Nepal, the Philippines, Sri Lanka and Thailand.

Pakistani commandos

Recently retired Pakistani Gen. Ehsan ul-Haq, the former No. 3 officer in the military, said Pakistan has increased both the numbers and quality of its commando forces in the war against Islamic extremists.

The Pakistan military's Special Services Group numbers more than 10,000 troops and is on the front line in fighting terrorists operating throughout the country, especially in remote border areas.

"These are very, very professional forces, elite and highly trained," Gen. Ehsan said during a meeting with reporters and editors of The Washington Times.

The general said the commandos are experts at what the British once called "frontier warfare."

The commandos were supported by training and equipment provided by the U.S., he said.

Al Qaeda in Iraq

The commander of international forces in Iraq said yesterday that significant progress has been made against al Qaeda terrorists in Iraq.

"It's clear that they no longer have significant sanctuaries and logistics capabilities to support numerous simultaneous attacks against large portions of the population," Army Lt. Gen. Ray Odierno told reporters via televideo conference.

Gen. Odierno said the group still has some capability to conduct deadly and "vicious" attacks against civilians in parts of Iraq.
But he noted that "the top levels of the leadership have been taken, either killed or captured."

"Some of them have been replaced, but those who replace them are not as good as those who were there before," Gen. Odierno said. "And we continue to see a slow degradation in al Qaeda's capability here in Iraq."

He said U.S., allied and Iraqi offensive security operations contributed to the success.

"But the real change has been that the populace rejects al Qaeda," Gen. Odierno said. "They no longer have the passive support of the community.

They've been rejected by their actions, and the people do not want to support them. In fact, what we find for the most part is that people will do anything to keep them out of their area, and they want to work closely with us to ensure that remains."

New Afghan tactics

Insurgents and terrorists in Afghanistan are entering the country without weapons and are being armed for attacks once inside the country, a U.S. Army commander in Afghanistan said this week.

Brig. Gen. Rodney Anderson, deputy commanding general of the Combined Joint Task Force-82, told reporters by teleconference Wednesday that insurgents infiltrate Afghanistan without weapons and "then conduct their attacks or link up with their equipment once inside the country."

Afghan border police have detected and detained some of these infiltrators, he said.

Suicide bombing attacks in Afghanistan have been carried out by a combination of foreign fighters as well as some Afghans, Gen. Anderson said.

CIA interrogations

CIA Director Michael V. Hayden revealed this week, in defending agency interrogations of terrorists, that more than 70 percent of the intelligence used in a recent national estimate came from questioning captured terrorists.

"The last six years have shown us that the best sources of information on terrorists and their plans are the terrorists themselves," Mr. Hayden said in a speech Tuesday in Chicago.

Calling the intelligence "simply irreplaceable," he also noted that the elicited information "is the sole reason we have rendition, detention and interrogation programs."

Fewer than 100 of the most hardened captured terrorists have been put through interrogation since 2002.

"Of those, less than a third have required any special methods of questioning," Mr. Hayden said.

The CIA director said the National Intelligence Estimate confirmed that the danger of another major al Qaeda attack against the U.S. is real. Al Qaeda aims "to execute a spectacular attack that would cause mass casualties, massive destruction and economic harm," he said.

Mr. Hayden noted that the estimate was less certain about one key element of al Qaeda plans: the presence of group operatives inside the U.S.

The CIA director's comments are a tacit admission that the agency continues to have a difficult time planting spies inside or close to al Qaeda and other terrorist organizations. (Bill Gertz)