Why did the United States choose to land in North Africa before continetial Europe

During the world war engagment in the 1940's, the Americans where torn between envading the North African region or Europe. This was as a result of the significance of the war.

In the end, they ended up invading the North Africa because the believed that it will open the Mediterranean to Allied shipping and as well as to ease the pressure on the hard-pressed Soviet armies and check the threatened advance of German power into the Middle East.

In the president opinion, he wanted to impress upon the Germans that they would have to face American power on their side of the Atlantic.