Bill Thompson

They were killing people in the area, conducting bombings.

They were getting trained.

In fact, there was a guy, and I believe, I'm going to get his name wrong, perhaps, but I believe his name, it was either Insulon Haplon or, oh, it was Jamar Patek.

Jamar Patek.

He was actually arrested outside of Osama bin Laden's compound the day after he was killed.

We were trying to kill him on that island, or in and around that island is where we were trying to find him and kill him.

So they're terrorist facilitators.

They did the USS Cole bombing.

It's so big.

Yeah, so up north in Manila is mostly the Christian population.

And as you get down south, it's the autonomous region of Muslim Mindanao.

And that is all of where these terrorist operations were happening.

And I believe that mostly pulled out of there, there might be still some people in Zamboanga.

I'm not sure anymore because it's been five years, four years since I retired.

But yeah, we were doing counterinsurgency operations down there and guys died down there and they're

uh, combat operations.

And, uh, I was out there.

Um, I was in a tactical military intelligence battalion and I was attached to the first special forces group.

And we were down there a couple of times and a lot of people don't even know about it.

So, yeah, I never heard about it.