Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I'm going to ask questions based on the national interest.
We've been focused lately on the Middle East. Of course there's the looming threat in Iran and asymmetric warfare to a great extent, but relatively recently we've observed some expansionist tendencies on the part of Russia. For example, the homes of Georgians in South Ossetia were shelled for a number of days, and Georgia did retaliate. It seems that the Olympics were used as a distraction. The international observers were away at the Olympics. At the end of the day, Russia has 20% more of the South Ossetian territory under its control and 30,000 Georgians from that region were exiled.
Do you see whether there is an expansionist tendency arising from that corner? Do we still need to prepare for more conventional deployments, as we had previously? In terms of national interest, would it be of national interest to play a role in the security of patrolling buffer zones, for example, in those former eastern European countries, especially those that are prospective NATO countries and have been contributing to the NATO mission in Afghanistan?