I think I may have accidentally voted for Patrick Buchanan.. True story.. I was eighteen in 2000, so Gore v. Bush was my first experience voting in a presidential election... I never expected the voting process to be so totally confusing.. I went to the booth all set to vote for George W. Bush, but the first question wasn’t for electing the President… there was a box that offered a straight party vote.. I didn’t know what that meant.. I thought, “Well, since I’m not a Republican, I’ll pick a third party,” I didn’t realize that by filling in the bubble next to ‘Reform Party’ that I would be casting my vote to all Reform Party Candidates.. I still filled out the rest of the ballot, including the bubble next to George W. Bush, but to this day, I’m not sure if my vote went to Bush, Buchanan, or if it were just cancelled out.. I only bring up the 2000 election because I’m sick of all of this opposition to the Iraq War.. Al Gore won the popular vote, so if it weren’t for those damn “framers” of our Constitution coming up with that stupid Electoral College thingy discriminating against urban voters, Al Gore would be the 43rd President.. So let’s say that Al Gore did win the election.. What would he have done after 9/11..? He would have invaded Afghanistan.. There’s nothing else he could have done.. Our economy would have tanked, millions of Americans would have lost their jobs, Al Gore would have RAISED taxes on the richest Americans, and inflation would be out of control… and then we would have invaded Iraq.. If that doesn’t sound like the Al Gore you know, then you either have a short attention span, or you’re living in the dark, because anyone who paid attention to 90s politics remembers that Al Gore was the Clinton Administration’s hawk.. He completely supported Clinton using military forces in both the Balkans and in Iraq.. You don’t have to do too much research to find quotes from Al Gore, Bill Clinton, or even John Kerry explaining the threat that Iraq posed.. Also, if Gore had won in 2000, Lieberman would be Vice President, and he is currently one of the few Democrats who is actually breaking away from his party and supporting the Iraq War.. Imagine how loudly he’d be beating the war drum if he and Al Gore could actually take credit for a war as swift and successful as the current operation in Iraq has been.. This is the root of what really causes my irritation with the Democrat Party.. Instead of having sane people asking respectful questions regarding our military operations, we’ve got lunatics who can’t stop screaming about how Iraq is Bush’s Vietnam and how Abu Gharaib is Bush’s Watergate..