Scorpio was suspended in the clear night sky above Ghazni, Afghanistan. The air was so pure the tiny two stars of Lambda and Upsilon in Scorpio’s stinger shone brightly. The city below was quiet, the only sounds were emplacements of government soldiers calling out to each other to watch for Mujahaddin attacks. Every few seconds one of them would fire off a round or two from a Dashaka machine gun, the tracer bullets creating bright day-glo pink arcs through the dark.

Looming in front of me was the enormous rock fortress of Bala Hissar, on top of which were the barracks and headquarters of the Soviet High Command for Ghazni, lit up with huge floodlights. It was August of 1984 and I was with a group of Harakat Mujahaddin about to attack the fortress.

So now the fate of our country rides on which George Bush will show up in St. Louis tonight, the one we saw in Coral Gables or the one in Wilkes-Barre. If the latter, GW has the capacity to do Kerry in once and for all. To go for the jugular, he could make the following points:

My opponent keeps using the word “truth.” Well, here’s the truth. Our troops who are putting their lives on the line in fighting the war on terrorism in Iraq cannot trust a man who, when he was in uniform, publicly accused his fellow soldiers of war crimes he knew they did not commit. Senator Kerry owes his fellow Vietnam Veterans an apology for calling them war criminals and I expect to hear it right here tonight.

America cannot afford such a man as my opponent as her president. America cannot afford a president who is all style and no substance - tall, big hair, deep voice uttering eloquent phrases that constantly contradict each other. It’s all frosting and no cake, folks.

America cannot afford a president who has never owned or managed a business, never met a payroll, doesn’t have the slightest clue of how businesses work, never been an employee of a company and hasn’t a clue of what it’s like to work for a living.

America cannot afford a president who has no record of accomplishment in 20 years in the Senate. America cannot afford a president who has never held any executive position and never managed any sort of organization, who has done nothing in his 20 years as a Senator except talk -- talk on the Senate floor, talk in speeches, talk to the press, and vote badly, vote consistently in ways that would damage American security.

OK, kids, it’s safe to come out and play now - the Sheriff is back and chased away the scary man.

During the second debate, I was so nervous that I drank an entire bottle of wine watching it. For the third, all I had was a glass of water. Kerry got demolished. He looked old. He looked haggard and weary and baggy-eyed tired. His hands trembled, either from nervousness or the onset of Parkinson’s. He droned and babbled statistics. He lost every pro-life Catholic vote in the country and every anti-homosexual “marriage” vote as well. He was constantly on the defensive regarding his pathetic and hyper-liberal Senate record. He reassured no one who doubts his capacity to win the war on Islamofascist terror.

Bush looked young, fit, energetic, relaxed, and upbeat. People don’t remember statistics. They remember images and a sound bite or two. The images, not the words, lost it for GW in the first debate, and destroyed it for Kerry in the third. Couple that with lines like, “A plan has to be more than a litany of complaints”; “In the mainstream of American politics, Senator Kerry is way over sitting on the left bank”; and of course, GW’s reply to what men should learn from their wives: “To listen to them.”

Just as Bush clinched it with millions of women voters with that response, so Kerry repulsed them with his “cheap and tawdry political trick,” as Lynn Cheney put it, of his invoking her daughter’s homosexuality. Moms all across America now agree with Mrs. Cheney’s assessment: “He is not a good man.”

What closes the deal with voters is Bush’s message of optimism, versus Kerry’s being little more than a litany of complaints posing as a “plan.” In virtually every presidential election in American history, the candidate perceived as most optimistic has won. Let that fact sink in. George Bush has nailed John Kerry’s coffin shut.

Finally, we’re learning one of Israel’s two best lessons in fighting terrorists. Israel, Sharon in particular, figured out a long time ago, that the enemy wasn’t a phenomenon, it was individuals: terrorists, not “terrorism.” So the solution was to forget about defeating some “ism” and hunt down and kill specific terrorists personally.

The latest example took place this Sunday, September 26, when Israeli agents planted a bomb under the driver’s seat of Izz al-Deen Sheik Khalil’s SUV, and blew the senior Hamas leader up to the Moslem Bordello in the Sky.

Taking this lesson to heart, US forces have begun targeting specific terrorists in Iraq. On September 22, US fighter jets nailed the “grand mufti” or spiritual leader of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi’s Tawid and Jihad terrorists, Omar Youssef Jumah. Using the nom de guerre Abu Annas al-Shami, Jumah was fond of issuing fatwas proclaiming that Allah approved of beheading infidels. No more fatwas for you, Omar. You’re a good terrorist now.

We’re learning at last to give Islamofascists what they want. They say their greatest strength is that they prefer death to life, while our greatest weakness is to love life more than death. If they love death, hey, no problem, happy to oblige.

Now it’s time to learn the second great lesson in national security we can learn from Israel.

I used to live in Washington DC. But for the past while now, I, like so many millions of other Americans, have been residing in Rotflmao City. It’s a fun place to be, but it can be exhausting. A number of my muscles, such as those attached to my rib cage, have become achingly sore. It’s a very distracting place to be. You keep losing your focus, and keep being uncontrollably seized by convulsive behavior. Yet I, like so many others, don’t have a choice. We’re all going to be living here for the next several weeks.

Moving to Rotflmao City is easy. All you have to do is read a news item like this:

Datelined September 21, 2004, ABC News ended its story on the activities of the Republican and Democratic presidential candidates for the day with this closing line:

President Bush will address the UN at 10:30 a.m. All day long, he will be meeting with world leaders. John Kerry appears on "Live with Regis and Kelly," before moving on to Florida for more campaigning.

This is the text of a briefing I am giving to Senate and Congressional staffers on Capitol Hill this morning.

The Reagan Doctrine was above all a paradigm-shift. We weren’t going to try and outlast the Soviets anymore, we were going after them. We didn’t want peace with them, we didn’t want to get along with them, we wanted them gone, history, da svedanya, adios and goodbye. Support of various anti-Soviet insurgencies was a conscious assault on the structure of the Soviet Empire. The goal wasn’t simply freedom for this or that Soviet colony, but the full collapse of the Empire as a whole, which ultimately meant the collapse of the Soviet Union itself.

This strategy… worked. The Reagan Doctrine is the most spectacularly successful geopolitical strategy of modern times. The question now is: where and how can such a strategy be best applied to the War on Islamofascism?

I think the “where” is Iran. Iraq is a job for the United States Military. Iran is not -- not in the sense of the 3rd ID taking Tehran. During the Cold War, we needed US and NATO forces in Europe capable of blocking a Soviet invasion, say through the Fulda Gap. But we didn’t need US soldiers to fight in the jungles of Nicaragua or protest in the streets of Prague and Budapest. What we needed - and what we had -- were large numbers of people living in these countries willing to struggle for their own freedom. This is what we need, and this is what we have, today in Iran.

The main obstacle in implementing a Reagan Doctrine for Iran is the same we had with implementing a Reagan Doctrine for the Soviets: Squishes in the White House and the State Department. In the 1980s they were Michael Deaver, Dick Darman, Jim Baker, and George Shultz. Today they are Robert Blackwill, Richard Armitage, and the entire Near East Bureau at State.

Thus to implement a policy of regime change in Iran, there must be a strategy of regime change in the National Security Council and the State Department.

Comfortable? Have a bucket of buttered popcorn and a cold beer at the ready? (If you were my friend Otto, you’d have instead a Grey Goose martini.) All set for the greatest political fireworks show of your life? Showtime is about to begin.

Those SwiftVet ads, you see, have been just the pre-lims to warm the audience up. The main acts will be much more entertaining. They’ll begin with signs appearing at Kerry campaign rallies saying:

Ho, ho, ho - Kerry must sign the One-Eight-Oh

What does that mean, you ask? It is the demand that Kerry sign a DoD (Defense Dept.) Form 180, which authorizes the release to the public of all military records the Pentagon possesses on him.