Here’s the complete transcript of Secretary Rumsfeld’s Town Hall Meeting in Kuwait; I highly recommend reading it to get a much better impression of what the meeting was like.

One wonders why mainstream media completely ignored the following exchange (hat tip: manny), showing the high morale and commitment of our troops.

Q: Sergeant Carr (sp), 3 in the 116 Armored Cav from Oregon. [Cheers] Mr. Secretary, with the recent re-election of our commander in chief to another term in office, the U.S. people sent a message to the world that we are committed to fight this war on terrorism. Specifically, in regards to non-NATO countries, how has this message affected their posture or willingness to renegotiate their relationship with the United States?

SEC. RUMSFELD: You know, you read an awful lot in the paper about different countries disagreeing on various things and there’s a tendency, I think, for the press to play up controversy and differences. But the reality is that since September 11th, the United States of America has put together a coalition of something like 85 or 90 nations, probably the largest coalition in the history of mankind. We have had somewhere — we’ve had somewhere between 25 and 30 countries helping us in Afghanistan and in Iraq. Those are large numbers of nations.

Now, why is that so important? I think it’s important because in the nature of the world today, there are so many things we can — no nation, certainly not the United States, but no nation on the face of the earth can do alone. We have to have the cooperation of other countries. You can’t deal with, for example, the problem of the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction around the world alone. You’ve got work with other countries. In the case of the global war on terror, you have to share intelligence. You have to cooperate in terms of the movement of people and money across borders. If you’re going to put enough pressure on the terrorist networks, which are truly global in nature, if you’re going to put enough pressure on them, you simply have to cooperate with other countries. My impression is that your question will be answered as we go through the coming weeks and months in the positive sense, that country after country that I’ve seen since the election — and I’ve been in Latin America in six countries, I’ve been over here since the election — and in every instance, I find countries cooperating, leaning forward, understanding the threat that exists in the world in wanting to work with the United States.