This week’s readings had you read select national strategies and other strategic documents that serve to establish homeland security goals and enabling objectives. Applying and analyzing the information you gathered from those readings, please respond to the following:

1. What are the desired characteristics of a national strategy document?

2. What is meant by a strategy hierarchy?

Forum Rubric: Answers the forum question(s) with a relevant, coherent and scholarly initial forum response (>250 words) 20/20; demonstrates lesson comprehension in forums with no more than 10% of content as direct quotes 15/15; employs complete and proper APA in-text parenthetical citations of the required readings for this week 10/10; responses to two classmates initial forum answers (>100 words each) 20/20; quality answer to professor follow-up question 20/20, main forum has APA reference list at end of forum (including the required readings) 5/5; reads and acknowledges professors end of week wrap up forum 10/10.

Note: your primary forum post answering the assigned question for the week is due on Thursday by 1155PM EST, and per the syllabus you can lose up to 5 points per day for late work.

Instructions: Craft your main forum answer is like a short paper directly answering the topic of the week with a well written response that fully utilizes the required readings for the week with at least 250 words. Focus only on the assigned question(s) in a scholarly manner using in-text citations from the required readings (save your personal experiences and opinions for your four forum replies in any given week). Each sentence quoting or paraphrasing any ideas or information from any source must be cited properly including the author and year of publication. Do not cite the APUS lessons — they are just basic information to start the week off and is not meant to be a primary source for you to reference in your reply (to receive full credit you must utilize and cite the listed required readings for that week). If directly quoting from the readings (or other scholarly sources), you must also include the page or paragraph number that you are quoting from like (Hoffman, 2006, p.7) or for articles and sources without pages (Renner, 2016, para.15). If you are directly quoting and there is no page number to cite, then you manually count the paragraphs and cite that number. You also need to have an APA style reference list at the end of your post listing the sources employed. For more on APA citations and reference lists see the APUS Style Guide for APA. You must first provide your own initial forum answer before replying to any classmates or the professor. The four replies of the week are more of a free flowing classroom discussion which offers you an opportunity to leverage your relevant personal experiences and express your thoughts and opinions. Respond to at least two other students initial forum answers with a minimum of 100 words each. In your replies to classmates you may offer your opinion on the topic of the week, substantially support or supplement another student’s answer, or even politely disagree with or challenge their forum answer (but do not ask your classmates questions, or do so only as a last resort per the forum philosophy). You will also reply to my follow up question in your own forum string, and also read and acknowledge the Professor wrap up forum I post toward the end of the week. Also, do not be afraid to respectfully disagree with the readings or a classmate where you feel appropriate; as this should be part of your analysis process and employing critical thinking and academic freedom. Forum posts are graded based on demonstrated knowledge of the lesson and weekly readings, relevance, timeliness, as well as clarity and quality of analysis and synthesis. Sources utilized to support answers are to come from the weekly readings, but other credible and scholarly sources may be used to supplement (but not replace) the assigned readings. However, dictionaries, encyclopedias and Wikipedia are not scholarly and are not acceptable sources in college level work. Do not use non-scholarly open websites as sources for your reply to the main forum answer. All forum work must be completed within the academic week. When replying to the main forum answer make sure to include your name in the “topic title” of your initial forum answer/response.