Posted: Fri, 08 Jun 2007 11:52:30 +0000

Back in the day, my cohort had a fancy name for it: co-opting. It’s also known as killing them with kindness. Or, if you prefer, bribery. I’m for it. The Daily Mail reports:

U.S. hands over a $10m bounty in briefcases for the killing of Muslim leaders

The United States handed over US$10 million (£5million) in bounties to four Muslim men in the southern Philippines today for their role in the killing of two leaders of the country’s deadliest Islamic militant group.

U.S. ambassador Kristie Kenney handed over briefcases containing crisp 1,000-peso bills to the men on the southern island of Jolo, the bastion of the Abu Sayyaf militants. They wore black hoods during the ceremony to conceal their identities.

Via Wretchard, who adds the fascinating details of the backstory:

A counterterrorist police superintendent in the Philippines told me that the US reward program was not getting much attention because the amounts were announced in dollar denominations. … [O]nce the revised figures were published in pesos the full enormity of what was on offer hit home with all the force of a D-11 bulldozer dropped from from 20,000 feet. The Muslim rebels stopped trusting their sweethearts, childhood friends, their brothers and their sisters. They probably stopped trusting their mothers.

Money talks. But you knew that.