I have looked among all the other reasons that Bush's people have put forward for the United States to invade Iraq. None hold water.

Our own people have crawled all over the place now and found no weapons of mass destruction. I am particularly resentful at having been hooked by that argument. All I can say is that I was not used to being systematically lied to by an American government that was cooking the intelligence on the basis of which it was supposed to be making serious decisions, such as to go to war.

The al-Qaida-Iraq link claim was bogus. The idea of the United States bringing democracy to the Middle East was silly and a vicious hoax as well as arrogant. The idea that attacking Iraq would make Israel safer was false; instead the United States pounding Arabs in Iraq has become totally associated with Israelis pounding Palestinians in Gaza, increasing Arab and Muslim hatred of the United States and Israel, to the long-term disadvantage of the Jewish state.

Virtually all other aspects of U.S. foreign policy have been damaged by the Bush administration's total focus on Iraq. America's traditional allies for the most part want nothing to do with us.

My own experience overseas during this administration is that they hate President Bush. They don't hate Americans, and we can hope that with him gone, the alliances can be mended without too much effort. Foreign policy areas that have suffered from neglect include Iran, the Koreas, China, particularly Latin America, and, of course, Africa, except to drain its oil.

John Kerry can fix all of this. George Bush couldn't, even if he wanted to. So I am voting for Kerry. America can't live in this world with a busted foreign policy.