Serious news rant. You will not leave this post in a good mood. Consider that a warning.
First heard about this news story when my brother's fiancee e-mailed us a link to it with the subject title "Creepy". It was about a hostage incident in Manila involving a tour bus filled with Hong Kong tourists.
It ended badly, and of the hostages killed were three Canadians - one of which had the exact same name as my little brother.
Then I got to work, and some co-workers told me the full story of a hostage crisis where everything they did went wrong.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-pacific-11055015
Former Filipino police inspector enters a tour bus of 20-some people with an assault rifle. He wants his job back. At some point he releases half the hostages.
It takes about six hours before police come back to tell him "no, we will not give you your job back."
The man's brother, also a cop, gets brought in to talk with his brother and to calm him down. Instead, the brother shouts to "NEVER GIVE UP!" in his stance that he was allegedly wrongly dismissed on drummed up charges, etc.. Ultimately, man's brother is arrested RIGHT IN FRONT OF HIM for fears that he's an accomplice after agitating the HELL out of the situation.
Man gets shooty.
Police so-called SWAT start getting antsy. Man gets bus to start moving. Police open fire on bus to shoot out the wheels WHILE THERE ARE STILL HOSTAGES ON BOARD.
Police attempt to assault the bus from the back. Man shoots back. Police retreat from a super botched assault.
Police then choose to SLEDGEHAMMER ALL THE SIDE WINDOWS IN FOR SOME REASON.
Man gets VERY shooty.
Second assault. Man gets killed by police sharpshooters after over 11 hours of siege.
Net result: one dead hostage taker, EIGHT HONG KONG HOSTAGES. Of those were three Chinese-Canadians: a father (who actually charged the gunman in an attempt to stop him / protect his family) and his two daughters - his young son also took a hard blow to the head during the ordeal, be it from a rifle butt or a SLEDGEHAMMER.
Oh yeah, and they still have to run ballistics to see if any of the hostages were possibly killed from POLICE FIRE.
Oh yeah, and this whole ordeal had LIVE NEWS COVERAGE the entire time. And the hostage taker was FOLLOWING THAT NEWS the entire time so he knew everything that was happening outside.
Followed up by a press conference from the Filipino president whose nature is to apparently always smile no matter what (which is kinda upsetting folks who don't know about that) and of several documented instances of police and students coming to the site for souvenir photos (which is really upsetting folks).
I'm an armchair tactician, no doubt. But wow . . . the more I read about how this was handled . . .
. . . face-palm doesn't even begin to express my feelings on this one.
Click here for a British Counter-Terrorist Expert's rundown of the event.
And you know what's worse? The Filipino people are going to be getting a lot of flak for this for a long time coming, undeserved as it may be. Hong Kong is pretty pissed off right now . . .
