corrente

Secretary Rumsfeld is in South Korea today. The South Koreans are being asked to send troops to Iraq. Why should they, the Secretary was asked. And I'm sure glad he was. And so is Rumsfeld apparently. Because it gave him an opportunity to put forward another definitive explanation of why we are in Iraq. And this one just might be the best one yet.

"It's a fair question, and I said: 'I suppose for the exact same reasons that the American people sent their young men and women to Korea 50 years ago,"' he told U.S. troops at this air base south of Seoul at the end of a week-long trip to Asia.

The 1950-53 Korean War, in which the United States lost 33,000 troops fighting Chinese and North Korean forces, "was not easy and the enemy did not collapse within days," he said.

"But it was the right thing to do," he said, pointing to South Korea's growth into a robust and prosperous democracy.

"And at the end of the day, when the institutions of a new democracy have taken root and when Iraq becomes a constructive player in the Middle East and not a threat to its neighbors and not a threat to its own people ... let there be no doubt, the rightness of our efforts there will be clear as well," he said.

I'm unable to comment further, I'm too choked up.