News reports that the Philippines would withdraw personnel from Iraq in accordance with the demands of Islamic serial killers were apparently mistaken: Philippines Won’t Withdraw Troops Early.

MANILA, Philippines - The Philippines — still hoping a kidnapped Filipino trucker driver will be released — rejected demands Sunday of the hostage takers for an early troop withdrawal from Iraq.

The group that snatched Angelo dela Cruz, 46, near the restive city Fallujah on Wednesday gave Manila until 3 p.m. EDT to advance its pullout by a month to July 20.

“In line with our commitment to the free people of Iraq, we reiterate our plan to return our humanitarian contingent as scheduled on Aug. 20, 2004,” Foreign Secretary Delia Albert told reporters after an emergency Cabinet meeting on the hostage crisis.

Albert said negotiations for dela Cruz’s release were continuing through “formal and informal channels,” adding: “We are hopeful that with the continued support and prayers of the people, we will hurdle this crisis.”

Government officials said Saturday that dela Cruz had been released, but the news was quickly denied by the militants in a message broadcast by Al-Jazeera television, in which the captors gave the Philippine government 24 hours to respond to their demand for a July 20 pullout. On Saturday, Philippine authorities announced troops would leave by Aug. 20 as planned.

That’s an encouraging development; but get a load of this jaw-dropper casually tossed in at the end of the Associated Press article:

A former U.S. colony, the Philippines has maintained close ties with Washington even after the closure of military bases here in the early 1990s.

A “US colony?” The United States “colonized” the Philippines? Perhaps this reporter is a graduate of Robert Jensen’s anti-American University of Texas School of Journalism, and is deliberately using such a loaded, politically-charged, and utterly incorrect term. Or maybe he’s simply ignorant. But the Philippines was an unincorporated territory of the United States.