recruiting for terrorists and (not) influencing people

The lead in today's Washington Post summarizes the problem quite nicely:

The war in Iraq has become a primary recruitment vehicle for violent Islamic extremists, motivating a new generation of potential terrorists around the world whose numbers may be increasing faster than the United States and its allies can reduce the threat, U.S. intelligence analysts have concluded.

Yes folks, an April National Intelligence Estimate confirms the obvious -- invading Islamic Arab countries makes Muslim Arabs like the US less and less, and makes them more and more likely to want to do nasty things in return. I remember Egyptian President-for-Life Hosni Mubarek in early 2003 saying that a US invasion of Iraq would create a hundred Bin Ladens. Congratulations, Dick Cheney, George W. Bush, and the rest, for attacking a country ruled by an unsavory but NOT terror-supporting regime and simultaneously failing to catch the REAL #1 terrorist - guy by the name of Bin Laden - and breeding new terrorists as a bonus.

Speaking of not influencing people (at least not positively) with our cowboy foreign policy, what struck me during tinpot tyrant Hugo Chavez's absurd speech at the UN last week was the fact that it was received with applause and laughs. He actually struck a chord with the gathered ministers and ambassadors when in his cartoonish, over-the-top language he criticized the de facto Bush Administration's interventionism and bellicosity.