Monday, July 24, 2006 | 7:17 a.m.
In the weeks before the ill-conceived and badly planned invasion of Iraq, President Bush said that "old patterns of conflict in the Middle East can be broken and America will seize every opportunity in pursuit of peace. The end of the present regime in Iraq would create such an opportunity."
Now, three years later, over 2,500 of our brave young men and women have died and over 20,000 are maimed. Iraq is in the midst of sectarian civil war with thousands of Iraqis dying every day; the country's infrastructure is in shambles with no end in sight. A terrorist organization like Hamas has taken over the Palestinian territory, and the other terrorist group in Lebanon, Hezbollah, has provoked Israel into another war, which is killing innocent Israeli and Lebanese citizens alike.
The U.S. commitment in Iraq and Afghanistan has emboldened Iran with its plutonium enrichment plants and Syria into supplying arms to the terrorists. The Muslim Brotherhood Party in Egypt has elected more of its members into the Egyptian Parliament. The Turkish government is drawing plans to invade northern Iraq to fight the Kurds.
This misguided foreign policy of the Bush administration has affected Bush's credibility and the reputation of this great country of ours, and he must now battle the perception throughout the Arab world and most of the world that he has embarked on a policy of failure.
Joe Beltran, North Las Vegas
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