US senator apologizes to Fil-Am veterans

WASHINGTON – US Sen.Ted Cruz has apologized to Filipino-American World War II veterans for comparing his 21-hour filibuster against US President Barack Obama’s health care reform to the Bataan Death March.

“I apologize. I should not have said what I did,” Cruz, a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee told war veterans Celestino Almeda, 96, and Jesse Baltazar, 93, Bataan survivors who called on him at the Senate to demand an apology for his “ill-advised and insulting statement.”

“For a sitting senator to compare less than 24 hours standing in the ornate confines of the Senate chamber to weeks of torture on a forced death march into concentration camps is despicable,” said Ed Navarra, head of the National Federation of Filipino-American Associations.

Cruz, a Texas Republican touted as a possible presidential candidate in 2016, told Almeda and Baltazar, who represented the American Coalition for Filipino Veterans, that it was not his intention to cause offense.

Cruz also expressed his gratitude to the men and women who endured the Bataan Death March.

Around 10,000 Filipino and American soldiers were killed during a five-day forced 65-mile march from Bataan to prison camps in 1942.