It’s time for their disruption and violation of human rights to be put to rest so that the nation can move ahead. They impede the progress and development of a number of rural areas. They’re responsible for a wide range of human rights abuses.

I did not include the first and last sentence in the paragraph above. Kind of confusing, di ba? I guess you didn’t know that it’s Arroyo who’s talking, you’d have a hard time guessing if she’s referring to the military or the rebels.

And I’m very happy to hear the report that the insurgents’ strength has been brought down to about 6,000 from 12,000 in 2001 and 7,000 a year ago. In other words, you have brought down their strength to one-half of what they used to be. And I am very happy to hear that from a high of a 107 NPA guerrilla fronts in 2005, continuing dismantling of their structures in barangay has eliminated 20 fronts. At the rate we are going, I feel we are on track to put an end to the insurgency by 2010. Congratulations!

Familiar words. I heard these years before, except that at that time, her subject was the Abu Sayyaf Group. Her exact words then were: “I’ve given the military a deadline for the ASG, 90 days.”

However, recent news reports say the Marines are still fighting ASG in Mindanao.

It must be just one of Gloria’s deadlines.

He should try telling that to the relatives of the more than 800 extrajudicial killing victims, who are mostly critics of the government.

Later, it claimed that Iraq’s Saddam Hussein was in cahoots with bin Laden’s al Qaeda. Thus, with a little help from its friends in the so-called “coalition of the willing”–to which Philippine President Arroyo enthusiastically dragged her nation–US invaded Iraq and killed around 12,000 Iraqi civilians and a thousand of its own soldiers.

What preceded these is a century of US aggression–I’m beginning the count here with the US invasion of the Philippines in mind) all over the world. When it was attacked in September 2001, it then went on a rampage of attacks against its perceived enemies, instead of reviewing its policy in dealing with other nations.

Three years after the terror in New York, is the US and the world safer as a result of its reaction to that attack?

Recent news in the Asia Pacific region say otherwise.

I remember the long hours we had to endure inside the freezing, tension-filled newsroom as we awaited Angelo’s fate, just about a month ago. Looking back, I could only imagine now the agony his family felt. More vividly, I could still remember the smiles on our faces when we finally saw Angelo looking shaken but alive on our television screens.

Weeks after Angelo’s release, Middle East special envoy Roy Cimatu has been reportedly looking into camps that may be safe for Filipino workers to work in. And now recently appointed OFW czar Noli de Castro has been “negotiating” with US ambassador Francis Ricciardone. The US is apparently alarmed that there are no more Filipino truck drivers who are willing to risk their lives to bring the soldiers their goods.

After lambasting our country’s efforts to save the life of one overseas Filipino worker, America is now patting our backs, urging us to send our people to work for them.

Meanwhile, the miserable unemployed demand the lifting of the ban, insisting they would rather die in Iraq than for their families to die of hunger.

In a job fair held in Manila yesterday, one computer science graduate applied for a job as a fast food crew.

Now I know what the word desperate really means. For a minute there I wanted to puke.

Before the US-led invasion of Iraq, President Arroyo kept on paying lip service to the UN. In the end however, she joined the so-called “coalition of the willing,” which went to war in Iraq without UN sanction.

The abduction and threatened beheading of Angelo de la Cruz gave the President a way to get out of Iraq by citing national interest amid heckling from its so-called allies, especially by the US. It was a chance to make up for a wrong decision of dragging the Philippines into a war that was later proven to be unjustified as it based on lies about Iraq’s non-existent WMDs and supposed links to Al-Qaeda.

Pulling out of Iraq could have also given Arroyo a chance to shed her image as Bush’s little drummer girl in Asia, and instead repackage herself a true leader of a sovereign nation.

So what if the US kicked us out of the coalition? Who wants to remain in a group of warfreaks that has lost its credibility? It wouldn’t matter much even if they are now using the legitimacy of the very institution that they ignored when they attacked Iraq.

Should the government push though with this plan, it would further expose the president’s character as a shrewd politician who would do anything that serves her own political interest. When she decided to pull out our troups to save de la Cruz, the people seemed to have deliberately ignored the fact that she did that to save her political career.

Should the government push though with this plan, it would prove that “national interest” and “sovereignty” were the farthest from her mind when she made the controversial decision.

A return to Iraq would just agains show the world Arroyo’s subservience to Bush, her hegemonist master.