Good news on missile defense

Spain has agreed to help us with missile defense:

Spain and the U.S. have announced that Spain will provide a base for U.S. ships in support of NATO's missile defense system.

The Oct. 5 agreement was announced by NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen, Spanish Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero and U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta at NATO headquarters in the margins of a meeting of NATO defense ministers here Oct. 5 and 6.

Under the agreement, four U.S. Aegis ships will be based at the Rota naval base near Cadiz in Spain. The agreement is part of U.S. President Barack Obama's phased adaptive approach to missile defense, under which ship-based, anti-ballistic missiles are being deployed in the eastern Mediterranean followed by ground-based systems in Romania and Poland.

[...]

He said it would boost NATO's naval presence in the region and support NATO's efforts to build a missile defense system on the back of recent agreements with Romania, Poland and Turkey.

For some time I've seen hints that Barack Obama has been slowly and quietly doing an about-face on his sellout of Poland and the Czechs to Russia on misssile defense.  The Czech governmetn doesn't trust Obama and won't go for it now, but it seems that Poland has.  It's good to acknowledge a mistake, as that policy was, and correct it.  If this is the case, give credit to Obama and his foreign policy team, especialy Leon Panetta.

Kinda curious as to why Zapatero would agree to this.  After all, he is not known to be especialy fond of the US.

Zapatero also said it would have a big socio-economic impact, especially for Cadiz. The government website said that it would create about 1,000 jobs.

Oh.