Posted on 01/30/2015 3:26:57 AM PST by Timber Rattler
That may be the case in some countries, but the Filipino police officers that got killed were not traffic cops. They all belonged to the Special Action Force, and were among the most elite combatants available. These cops are as far away from traffic cops as a rubber ducky is from a frigate. They have been trained by the best, and can be considered more of a paramilitary special forces team rather than police. Somewhere between GSG9 (the German special police force) and KSK (the German military special forces).
Definitely more capable than one man with a rifle, something that Abu Sayyaf has learned over the years at the hands of the SAF.
Yes, they got massacred in this case, but that is an outcome that can occur whenever the enemy sets up an ambush and basically saturates the area with ordnance. It can happen to even the very best - and by the very best I mean the very best.
A good example is the 2011 ambush in Afghanistan, where a Chinook helicopter, call-sign Extortion 17, was ambushed by Taliban. As the Chinook was flying past the vile enemy literally just saturated the air with RPGs, one got the tail rotor, and Extortion 17 went down. In it were 38 men, 30 of them American and half of those being members of the Gold Squadron of DEVGRU (SEAL Team 6). That one attack was the hardest hit the special operations community has ever received, and especially hit DEVGRU hard. Delta Force has also not been spared, to the extent that at one point operators from DEVGRU had to work together with members of the Unit in missions due to the attrition the Unit had encountered in Iraq.
In essence, bad things happen when mistakes are made, and a very big mistake was made in the Philippines that led to many dead. However, none of those killed was a traffic cop, and all of them knew how to use rifles. Their recce was insufficient and they ended up being at the wrong place at the wrong time, which when it comes to fighting Jihadis can be an expensive butcher's bill.
For half a second, I wondered why Terrorist were interested in MILF, as I understand that acronym; Mother’s In-Law, I’d like to ***”. Obviously, there is no relation.
That sounds like a military action, why weren’t troops called in to destroy the Muslims?
I’m going to take some convincing that the military didn’t tip the terrorists off.
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