Military exercises in the Philippines conceal near-permanent U.S. troop deployments

Evidence

By 2003, the U.S. military was participating in eighteen such exercises a year; U.S. troops outnumbered Filipino troops in the largest exercise. Soon, there were more than thirty exercises per year. By 2006 there were 5,500 U.S. troops involved, almost twice as many as in the 2,800-person Filipino contingent. By 2008, the 6,000 Americans were three times the number of Filipinos. Relatively quickly, the exercises had become a way to hide the near-permanent deployment of large numbers of U.S. troops involved in counterinsurgency operations. The journalist Robert D. Kaplan reports hearing that top Pentagon civilians “hated the fact that they had to hide such troop insertions under the cover of annual exercises.” — David Vine, Base Nation_ How U.S. Military Bases…, 984

Categorization

• XREF: Echoes the Honduras pattern in para 977-978; supports the lily-pad chapter thesis.