Filipinos want US out of Mindanao

[IndianaGreen]

Question: Why is President Obama continuing to follow Bush's neocon foreign policies? Why are we still supporting the authoritarian Macapagal Arroyo regime in the Philippines? Why are our troops asked to prop up the Filipino axis of evil that is the reactionary Catholic Church, the military, and the couple of hundred families that control all the wealth?

Filipinos want US out of Mindanao

Friday 28 August 2009
by Tom Mellen

Progressive forces in the Philippines have urged Manila to scrap a military deal with the US after former officials testified that US soldiers have been fighting in Mindanao in violation of the country's constitution.

Under a Visiting Forces Agreement (VFA), hundreds of elite US troops have been deployed in half a dozen locations in the southern Philippines since 2002, ostensibly to train and advise Filipino troops fighting Islamist militants and the Maoist New People's Army.

On Thursday retired Philippine navy lieutenant Nancy Gadian testified at a congressional hearing that US troops based on Mindanao were embedded with Filipino units in combat situations.

The Philippine constitution bars foreign troops from fighting in the country, which was a US colony until 1946.

Senator Miriam Defensor-Santiago, who heads the foreign relations panel at the upper house of Congress, said that the government must end the VFA and renegotiate a new security deal with the US.

Ms Santiago said: "If the US wants to use Philippine territory in its alleged war on terror, they will have to negotiate a treaty with the Philippines.

http://www.morningstaronline.co.uk/index.php/news/world/Filipinos-want-US-out-of-Mindanao

Related thread by BunkerHill24:

Blackwater trains mercenaries in Philippines

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=103x476105