I was disappointed that, in his letter, Dave Glover used his tribute to our recently deployed troops as an opportunity to take a shot at those who opposed the war (May 23).

I respect and admire people who choose to serve their country in the military; my beef is with the Bush administration and its reckless foreign policy.

I do not believe that peaceable solutions to global problems involve “letting our guard down,” as Mr. Glover implies. In Iraq, tough inspections by the United Nations kept Saddam Hussein from producing weapons of mass destruction since 1991. The chemical weapons he used against the Kurds in the 1980s were supplied to him by the United States.

Despite George W. Bush’s desperate attempts to show a link between Iraq and Sept. 11, no such connection has ever been established. Reports that one of the hijackers met with Iraqi officials in 2001 turned out to be false. Yet Bush – for his own political gain – continues to exploit the misconception that Saddam Hussein was behind the attacks.

If the war against Iraq is now – after the fact – packaged as a humanitarian mission, I’d like to know why Dick Cheney’s former company, Halliburton, was awarded a $7 billion, no-bid contract to extract Iraq’s oil. And I’d like to know why Bush gives billions in military aid to some of the most brutal regimes in the world, including Uzbekistan, Algeria, Indonesia and Saudi Arabia.

James E. Bishop, Carrabassett Valley