In World War II, 150,000 Filipinos responded to a call from the United States to fight with them against the Japanese. As a lure, they were promised benefits including a pension from the American government. After the war ended, a war in which many of those same Filipinos had been victims of the infamous Bataan Death March, Congress announced that the U.S. had had its fingers crossed when it made that promise, and rescinded the offer.
Ever since then, Filipino veterans have been fighting to obtain the benefits they were promised. Most have died by now; only 18,000 remain alive. And now they're happy, unfortunately prematurely so, because the Senate has passed a bill restoring those promised benefits (not, by the way, retroactively). I say prematurely because the House will be taking up the bill "before the end of the year" (no rush), and the President may veto the bill anyway.
Sooner or later the world is going to learn that the word of the United States Government, even in the form of a law or a treaty, is absolutely worthless.
Reprinted from Left I on the News