Warped mind

Detained Sen. Leila de Lima was talking through her hat when she claimed the recent bombings in Mindanao were the result of failed intelligence.

Presidential spokesman Sal Panelo simply ascribed the assessment to De Lima’s “dulled senses” as a result of her incarceration due to drug trafficking charges.

De Lima also can’t be referring to President Rody Duterte who sometimes tells the public raw reports even ahead of the military on sensitive issues, such as the Jolo cathedral bombing in which he was the first to propound the involvement of a foreign suicide bomber in the attack.

Subsequently, the military did find two Indonesians, who were a couple, as having blown themselves up resulting in the gruesome incident during a Sunday Mass.

The resolute actions of Rody, including the declaration of martial law, were the result of him acting on reliable and quick intelligence.

“The detained Sen. Leila de Lima is talking nonsense. Her confinement has dulled her senses,” Panelo said in a statement.

The spokesman reminded De Lima that Rody was the same President “who crushed the dreaded and ruthless Islamic State (IS) and their local counterparts in the Marawi siege.”

While it took six years for a coalition of forces led by the United States to expel the IS from Syria, it only took six months for Rody to clear Marawi City of the terror incursion.

“Rody is also the same President who has declared a war on drugs, criminality and corruption and gained headway in all those fronts by his swift action and enforcement of the law, without fear or favor,” Panelo added.

De Lima, in her daily reverie behind bars, may have been caught in a time warp and had issued the comments referring to her patron, former President Noynoy Aquino’s actions during the Mamasapano debacle.

Among Noynoy’s failures was his insistence that, lately, in rebuttal to Rody’s allegations before relatives of the 44 fallen Special Action Force (SAF) troopers, provided more questions than answers.

Among the points in his statement released after Rody practically put the blame squarely on him for the death of the SAF commandos on 25 January 2015 was that the United States was not involved in Oplan Exodus that neutralized Malaysian terror kingpin Marwan but resulted in the death of 44 SAF commandos.

Rody, then Davao City mayor, was in the same room as Aquino in Zamboanga City when the SAF members were being mowed down by Islamic rebels for almost the whole day of 25 January, and the operation was secretly led by the United States’ Central Intelligence Agency.

Noynoy’s counterclaim was that the US helped with equipment and intelligence gathering and nothing else, but claimed he did not discuss the details of the operation with American officials.

Both the Philippine National Police-Board of Inquiry and the Senate reports on the incident indicated at least six Americans were at the Oplan Exodus command center.

No other action was taken by Noynoy regarding the spread of terrorist groups during his term outside of the US-sponsored operations.

Armed Forces of the Philippines intelligence reports also cited at least 23 armed groups in Mindanao that still pledge allegiance to IS and several foreign jihadists operating in Mindanao.

Foreign IS fighters from Asia, such as from Indonesia, Malaysia and even China, were unable to return home after the defeat of the terror group in Syria and Iraq.

More than 30 Malaysian militants were believed involved in the Marawi City siege.

Aside from Asian countries, foreign fighters from Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Chechnya and Singapore were reported to have been part of the pro-IS groups in Marawi City.

The outcome of the process to create the Bangsamoro autonomous region is a potential source of another armed outbreak.

The Bangsamoro Islamic Freedom Fighters (BIFF), which is among the Muslim groups that pledged allegiance to IS, appears to be waiting in the wings for developments that will make it spring into action.

The BIFF is a splinter group of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) which was formed after the Memorandum of Agreement on Ancestral Domain signed under former President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo was ruled unconstitutional by the Supreme Court in 2008.

MILF and BIFF members are mostly linked to each other either by blood or through intermarriages.

Rody had repeatedly sought apology for imposing martial law, but said it was the best way to address the existing threats from the IS.

The failure of intelligence is among the blunders of the yellow horde since it had lost its faculty on what should be considered effective that saves lives against that which results in feeding soldiers to the lion, as Rody termed it.