If there were US SPECOPS personnel involved,there will be every effort made to keep that fact out of the press. As far as the operation being "botched",any hostage rescue attempt carries a high risk of one or more hostages being killed. It is my understanding that it was concluded that the Guerilla organization was not going to release the hostages,and most likely,would execute them. It is pretty much standard procedure,in both military counterterrorist operations and law enforcement Swat operations,to initiate a rescue attempt under those circumstances. Only in the movies do special ops troops sneak in to the jungle hideout,free the hostages,and kill all the "bad guys" without any friendlies getting hurt.

I didn't intend on disparaging anyone by calling the rescue attempt "botched." Now the terrorist guerillas have 1 hostage, instead of 3, the other 2 are dead. How many of the terrorists are dead? Trying to rescue the hostages is noble, but if the hostages CAN'T be rescued, the operation shouldn't stop until the terrorists are all dead.

The guerillas have 0 hostages instead of 3, not 1. The survivor was successfully rescued. The commandos were U.S.-trained and equipped Filipinos, according to the AP; if the SpecOps people were actually involved in the operation, they're denying it. The official word is that Americans piloted the helicopters for the evacuation, but otherwise didn't take part in the battle. Doesn't really make much difference to me, anyway, so I'm not going to argue with anyone who wants to scream cover-up or conspiracy. Four Abu Sayyaf were killed, which isn't much, but the group has apparently gotten a lot smaller over the past year, so every man counts for them. --Phoenix Rising

Thanks. The report I was reading was sketchy information. I didn't know at the time that they had rescued one of the hostages.

It was an attempt. -Part of the learning curve. Also -most importantly-we were not there. Who knows what pressures were brought to try this. ..the ground, the avalilable personnel etc. Very very complex.

My problem with this attempt, is the low body count. --4 out of 30-40 Abu Sayef-- When attacked by two squads of Army commandos equipped with night vision equipment. It sounds like the army guys lost the element of suprise before they even attacked. Will be interesting to read any after action debriefs.

head over to these Philippine newspaper websites for the latest: http://www.inq7.net/ http://www.philstar.com/philstar/index.htm you might also be able to read previous news from these sites.

The "rescue attempt" as you are calling it wasn't really a rescue attempt. Philipine scout rangers knew the area that the Abu Sayaf were in (with the Hostages). They were trying to pinpoint the location of the ASG for a rescue operation. During this operation they were at a stream to get water, at the same time the ASG stopped on the other side. They spotted each other and a fire fight ensued. At that time there were only 14 ASG left in this group and only about 10 had guns. Americans were not directly invovled. For two reasons the Philippinos are very proud and only wanted us to play a supportive role and the American commanders were apprehensive about putting americans in harms way. My personal view if the scout rangers weren't compromised and found the Abu sayaf, the true Philippine Counter Terrorist unit would have been called in to finish the job and would have had a better chance of success. How do I know this? I trained them

i think the first reason should have been that the philippine constitution prohibits alien armed forces fighting in the philippine territory....personally, if the americans want a crack at the ASG, i would glady hand those worthless bandits to the americans...let's see how tough these ASG are when pursued by Green berets and helicopter gunships at night...