It's a Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood. Today's Topic is Strategy.

Hello neighbor. I'm so glad that you could join me today. Today we are going to talk about strategy. Can you say "strategy?" Nice try.

Let's go over to Picture Picture and look at a picture of the Middle East. (Piano music plays...)

RATS, kids! Picture Picture is broken. We were going to look at a really neat picture of the Middle East for me to help us talk about strategy. That makes me sad. Do you feel sad sometimes? Too bad! Well, since Picture Picture is broke, go find your home globe or world atlas. Can you say atlas? Didn't think so.

Now that you have found a map, turn to the part that shows the landmass between Israel and India. You may want to get a couple of sticky notes or some gold stars to mark the areas that I am about to point out.

Have you got all of that together? Good. Now that we have all of our supplies, lets see if we can have a little fun!

After the attacks on the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon in Washington, DC President Bush committed troops to Afghanistan to oust the Taliban regime. Find Afghanistan on your map and put a star there. Good!

(OK. I'm tired of the Mr. Rogers thing. Switching to normal writing.)

Once we had stabilized Afghanistan, we turned our attention to Iraq. We ended up attacking Iraq for a number of reasons: 1) Saddam had been violating numerous UN resolutions for 12 years. 2) Saddam would not let the UN weapons inspectors do their jobs. 3) Iraq was a state sponsor of terrorism, paying the families of suicide bombers in "palestine" $25,000 when their loved ones blew themselves (and usually a busload of children) to meet their Maker. 4) Iraq was a sanctuary for terrorists. (Abu Nidal and Zarkawi.) 5) Corruption was rife in Iraq and it is almost certain that money laundered through the Oil for Food program was given to terrorists and 6) all of the world's intelligence community indicated that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction. Put a gold star on Iraq.

Israel is one of our greatest (and before the two aforementioned wars, our only) ally in the Middle East. They have consistently been able to whip the tails of every country that ever was stupid enough to attack them. Put a gold star on Israel.

The United States Navy can go anywhere in the world where there is sufficient water. Please place stars on the Mediterranean Sea and the Persian Gulf.

In the Middle East, which countries are the greatest sponsors of terror? The two that come immediately to mind are Syria and Iran. Of course there are hotbeds of terrorists in Egypt, "palestine" and Saudi Arabia too. Please note where the gold stars are. Because of the military action that we have taken, the United States is in an excellent position to project its power throughout the Middle East. Any uprising of the anti-Islamic movement in Iran will be easily supported from our bases in Iraq and Afghanistan. With US Naval control of these areas it will not be necessary to secure air space permission from other countries in order to project our forces or support Iranian insurgent forces.

Now turn to the West. Look at the positioning of American troops and allies. Syria lies between Israel and Iraq. Once again, projection of force is a moot point.

You can rest assured that this fact hasn't slipped by even our other Arab, er, allies. It is interesting how interested the Saudis have become in the war on terror since the invasion of Iraq was completed. It is also interesting how cooperative they have been supplying oil since then.

What I believe we see developing is a very real strategy in the War on Terror. We are actually seeing a deployment of our forces to facilitate the enforcement of this war. No one has been talking about it. Why on earth would they? You certainly don't want to tell the enemy what you are doing. I just find our placement striking.

It is interesting that John Kerry and Wonderboy Edwards don't seem to grasp the strategic significance of our placement... interesting, but not surprising, since their grand strategy in the war on terror is to do what the President is doing - but do it better! They want to give the Iranians nuclear material so that they can prove that they aren't trying to make a bomb with it, and they want to pass a global test before they wage war against threats to American security.

As I said earlier, Mr. Cheney disclosed alot about the mindset of the Bush Administration when he defended the war in Iraq as a war that is not against Al Qaeda, but a war against terrorists and state sponsors of terror. Look at the stars! They tell the story!