350 Rice on D-Day and Reagan

"It's been really so touching. I've seen these elderly gentlemen here, some of them in wheelchairs, some of them barely able to stand, but still determined to salute the flag. And I just have an image in my mind of these young men who sat there, about to cross onto these beaches and about to meet enemy fire. I can't even imagine what it was like.

And it just reminds us, and these crosses and Stars of David behind us remind us the price of the sacrifice for freedom. It reminds us that nothing of value is ever won without sacrifice, that liberty has to be defended.

It comes, as you said, at the same time that we've lost Ronald Reagan, one of the great battlers for freedom. . . I was a young Soviet specialist when he had the confidence, the nerve really, to say that communism would end up on the ash heap of history. At that time, it seemed pretty unlikely. It must have seemed pretty unlikely that this Normandy landing was actually going to succeed and end up overthrowing Adolf Hitler. But when people who are committed to liberty set their minds to it, they can do a lot."

Dr. Condoleezza Rice, National Security Advisor, with Chris Wallace on FoxTV interview, June 6, 2004