To the editor:

In the last quarter century, the relationship between the United States and the Moslem world has greatly deteriorated. In the world of public opinion, the United States also is rated very low.

Our foolish, immoral attack on Saddam’s Iraq has resulted in the awful slaughter of over 50,000 Iraqis and the wounding of many times more. About 2,500 of our soldiers have been killed and many times more have been wounded. The slaughter of Iraqis has greatly increased al-Qaida both in Iraq and worldwide. The murdering of Iraqi civilians by American soldiers and the torture of Iraqis by American soldiers in Abu Ghraib prison is shameful! The alleged reason for invading Iraq proved wrong – Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction!

Since the United States has failed in Iraq, the United Nations should take over and partition Iraq into three separate sovereign states: about 15 percent to the Kurds, 30 percent to the Sunnis and 55 percent to the Shiites. People should be transferred to live in their own state.

Americans, as Christians, should now deliberately work to win the friendship of Moslems worldwide. A good way to start would be to help to get a sovereign Palestinian state established. How right Pope John Paul II was in opposing starting the war in Iraq!

John A. Bond,

Lawrence