Remember what I said last month about Positive, Neutral and Negative responses to terrorism and in particular hostage taking. It was right then and it is obviously right now and anybody who disagreed then can now see what I was saying in action.
Phillipines rewarded terrorists thus giving them (the terrorist) a positive response for their actions and the frequency of such attacks increases. This is compared to the past few months of Neutral responses where the target government simply refuses to negotiate and hopes for the best, the terrorists do not gain anything however they dont loose anything. The third option which hasn't been tried yet is too punish terrorist attacks by pledging more money and/or troops to the reconstruction of Iraq, I personally feel that if contries tried the third option not only would it be saving innocent lives in the future, the negative effect of such an action to the terrorists would act as a detterent to taking hostages in future. These murders will only stop when a leader shows some backbone and does the exact opposite of what the terrorists want by hurting their cause.