AARP: Hates the Troops, Loves the Queers



This ad was created by a group called USA Next, giving the Bush White House absolutely airtight deniability that they have anything to do it. The campaign is being mounted to discredit AARP for its traitorous opposition to the Dear Leader's Social Security phase-out plan, and it's very well-funded. Obviously, this is a completely independent group of civic-minded individuals... the same individuals who gave us the spectacle of the Swift Boat Liars for Bush. Which also, by pure coincidence, happened to benefit Bush politically.

Honestly, I wasn't buying USA Next's line. But then I went to the AARP's web site, to get their side of the story, and what do you know? The AARP does hate our troops! I found article after article after article detailing the AARP's treasonous and virulent hatred of the American military.

I also found ... well, I didn't find anything at all on their site about gay marriage. (Obviously, they're hiding their real agenda from us real Americans!)

Yes, it's clear, isn't it? The AARP isn't an organization "dedicated to enhancing quality of life for all as we age"; it's an organization dedicated to the destruction of the US military and the advancement of the radical homosexual agenda!!

I mean, WOW! Who knew?! And to think, my parents are members! I'd better tell them right now!







... oh, hey. Can somebody tell me what the fuck this all has to do with Social Security?

Of Budgets, Great and Small

My wife and I just went through the thoroughly unpleasant exercise of figuring out our household budget. We're expecting a new member of the family in the next few months, a baby is rumored to be very expensive upfront, and the new mom will be taking some unpaid leave to get the baby off to a good start. So we needed to take a look at what was coming into the house, and what was going out, and we needed to make some decisions about how to reconcile these numbers with our desire to somehow stay solvent, save for our retirement and our baby's education, pay our immediate expenses and pay down our debt -- all at the same time!

My wife and I are very lucky people: we've been pretty frugal, we've made some good decisions, we both have good jobs, we are in good health, and we're not deeply in debt. So, fortunately, the decisions weren't hard. Even so, the process was a little rough, because there's a lot of detail involved, and it literally entails generating and then analyzing several sheets covered in numbers, and not just any numbers, at that. These are numbers which have strong emotional resonance. Who wants to do that? Imagine how much harder it would have been if we had a number phobia, or if we knew we had a real money problem and didn't want to face up to it. In the end, though, we did the responsible thing. We balanced our budget, and now we're financially prepared for the baby's arrival. We think.

At the same time that my wife and I are wrestling with our budget, our town is also facing an issue with its own. The town is currently projecting a shortfall of between $1-2 million this year, and nobody seems to have a good idea around that uncomfortable fact. Cutting the budget will entail real pain: the biggest single line item in the budget is the school system, which would necessarily have to bear the brunt of any cuts. The town has been covering its shortfall with its savings, but this has been a stopgap and is clearly not a long-term option.

The town can ask us to pass a property-tax override, enabling them to raise our property taxes over the 2.5% per year maximum increase allowed under Massachusetts Proposition 2 1/2. Predictably, when word of this possibility spread around, the signs sprouted on the larger lawns in town: "NO OVERRIDE." No decision has been reached on whether to hold a vote on an override, though, so it might not happen. My wife and I aren't sure yet how we feel about the town budget. We don't mind paying our fair share of taxes, but we certainly want to make sure we're getting our money's worth for what we spend, especially since our daughter is going to be going to school here. (...or maybe not.)

Regardless of whether we're talking about our own household budget or that of the town, however, we're talking about operating under the same set of rules. No budget, no matter how large or small, must operate according to these rules: Income must be equal to or greater than expenses. The numbers must add up correctly. Nothing must be left out of the budget. (This was the sticking point in developing our household budget. Gathering all the receipts, adding them all together, categorizing them -- does this one go under "Groceries" or "Baby Supplies"? -- and ensuring that we hadn't forgotten whole categories of spending, was probably the hardest part.) And most critically, no matter how we feel about it, the numbers are the numbers. We must make the choices that make the numbers balance. The budget must be honest. Otherwise, it's worthless.

With those simple rules in mind, it's useful to take a look at the US Federal Government budget which has just been proposed by George W. Bush. This document is one of the most breathtakingly dishonest documents to ever come out of an already amazingly dishonest government.

The claim that caught my eye in this part of the document was that this budget actually contributes to reducing the budget deficit. Supposedly, by 2010, the deficit -- the annual amount that the government borrows, not the total debt, which is still spiraling out of control -- is to be cut in half. In order to get there, however, the budget also assumes that none of the three signature George W. Bush policies -- the War, the Permanent Tax Cuts, and Social Security Privatization -- exist or are enacted, even though they are Bush's own priorities in his second term.

The federal budget makes no provision -- none whatsoever -- for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Not even a guess! These wars are officially budgeted at zero! See, instead of putting them in the real budget, they ask Congress for the money in "supplemental" requests (like this one); and they claim that since they don't know how much, exactly, the wars are going to cost, they can't put even an estimate in the budget. While the real cost of these wars is already about $300 billion, the official estimate of the cost is ZERO.

The budget assumes that Bush's signature tax cuts expire, as they are currently set to. It's really impossible to balance the US Budget with these tax cuts in place, so even though Bush is committed to making them permanent, his budget magically wishes them away, so that he can claim to be cutting the deficit.

Finally, the budget assumes that there is no Social Security privatization, even though, once again, Bush is committed to enacting his cherished private accounts this term. Here's the rub: in order to set up Bush's private accounts, the government will have to borrow enormous sums of money -- somewhere between $750 billion and $2 trillion. Clearly, there is no way to reduce the deficit by half, let alone balance the budget, and enact Bush's private accounts scheme, so it's not in the budget.

How easy would my life be if we could run our household budget by W Rules?

"Honey? We're doing great! All I have to do is take the mortgage payment out of our budget, and look! We're running a big surplus! While we're at it, let's borrow a whole bunch of money and go on a spending spree. And, yes, I am buying an SUV, but since I don't know whether I'm buying a Hummer or a Bad Boy, I'm estimating the cost as ... zero. But I promise -- ", with my fingers crossed behind my back, "-- I promise that in five years, we'll borrow less than we're borrowing this year. Wheeeeee!"

Well, you know how that ends. Sooner or later, a banker (Republican, naturally) will come around and take possession of my house, my car, and anything else I have of value. We would end up in a homeless shelter, assuming those were still being funded (they're being cut back, of course).

Because government budgets contain such enormous numbers and are difficult to read, and -- frankly -- because they're being lied to, people think that governments operate under different budget rules from their households, but it's just not true. Even the federal budget, with its dizzying heights of debt and its byzantine depth of detail, operates according to the same rules as our little household budget or our town budget: the numbers must add up, and the budget must be honest. (The biggest difference is the amount of say you get. I mean, hey, at home, I get one of two votes. In the federal budget, well, since I am not on the Bush Pioneer list of big-money donors, the Republicans let me have exactly zero votes.)

When it comes to government budgets, like our town's, there are only two choices. Either taxes must be raised, or expenses must be cut. (Our town doesn't sell T-Bills, and I'm betting yours doesn't, either.) Those are the only two choices, and neither one is easy. It takes honest and brave people to face up to these problems. By borrowing madly, shifting the burden of currenly liabilities on to future generations, and by pretending that other major liabilities simply don't exist, Bush is only demonstrating his dishonesty and his moral cowardice.

It is true that the US government has a better credit rating than you or I do, but that's because the government can always squeeze people for more money to pay off its debt. And believe me, it will. Bush is busy piling on a mountain of debt right now, and -- I'm assuming you're not a billionaire Republican friend of W here -- sooner or later, the government is going to come looking for you and me to pay it back, because whatever else a government can do, it can't borrow its way out of debt.

(By the way, remember back when balanced budgets were a Conservative issue? Now I'm a hippie for pointing out that you can't borrow forever. Proof that God has a sense of humor.)

"Freedom," wrote George Orwell, "is the freedom to say that two plus two equals four." This week, as we ponder the glorious steaming fetid lie that Bush will truck up to Congress and call his Budget Plan, that phrase resonates on more than one level.

Your Social Security Scorecard

Want to find out how you'll do under George Dubya's Social Security privatization scam? Pay a visit to this Social Security Calculator. It's pretty easy to use and very informative. Want to check the assumptions? You can 'View Source', which makes this page a lot more transparent than anything coming from the Republicans.

Jeff Gannon, White House Ho

Did you hear the one about the right-wing media whore who got into the White House under a false name and turned out to be a real whore?

It sounds like a bad joke, but "Jeff Gannon", allegedly a "reporter" for a flyweight outfit calling itself "Talon News", was a regular presence in White House press briefings. He got called on by Bush a lot, too, so he could lob Winger-friendly softball "questions" like this:

"[Democratic leaders] say that Social Security is rock solid and there's no crisis there. How are you going to work -- you've said you are going to reach out to these people -- how are you going to work with people who seem to have divorced themselves from reality?"

(More examples here)

"Gannon's" "news stories" were usually just copied and pasted from Republican talking points and White House press releases. It's obvious that "Gannon" was no journalist, he was just another White House shill who plays one on TV.

Looking into "Gannon's" background, a group of journalists and bloggers have unearthed a trove of material about the guy.

First of all, Gannon's name isn't Gannon. His real name is James Guckert. He's been getting a White House pass for months on his false name, but they claim they knew his real name (or maybe not: the story seems to have changed. Sometimes they knew his name, sometimes they didn't). They furthermore claim that they never heard of the guy who set up the "Talon News" site, even though he's a major Republican donor. How likely do you suppose that is? Here's a nobody from a rinky-dink web site, applying for White House credentials, getting the credentials only a few days after the web site goes live, and getting called on by Bush all the time at press conferences. You really suppose they don't know who he is?

If you're still unconvinced that they know him, consider this. He's one of the guys who got the Plame leak! That's right -- when someone in the Bush White House wanted to punish Joe Wilson, the ambassador who exposed Bush's yellowcake lie in the State of the Union address, they did it by leaking the identity of Wilson's wife, Valerie Plame -- who was working for the CIA -- to a select few "journalists", including Judith Miller of the New York Times, Robert Novak (the only one who published the information), and ... "Jeff Gannon". I guess they know who he is, all right.

Here's where the story starts to get bizarre. An investigation into Guckert's background reveals that he has been running an escort service on the web. But he's not just the pimp -- he's selling his own services! The web sites (you really have to see them to believe it) are military-themed, with names like "US Male Corps.com"; Guckert appears to have served in the Marine Corps, and is now applying a military theme to his "services", for guys who are turned on by that kind of thing.

How much stranger can this story get?

In situations like this, I like to apply the "Shoe on the other foot" test. Imagine for a moment that the Clinton Administration had planted a friendly shill in the White House press corps, and allowed him to get credentialed under a false name. Assume, furthermore, that this friendly shill had been given access, in strict violation of the law, to classified information exposing the identity of an undercover CIA operative. Assume, furthermore!, that this friendly shill turned out to have served in the US military as a gay man, and then used his association with the military to further a career as a gay prostitute!

Can you imagine the Right-Wing Shitstorm that would ensue? There would be such a hue and cry from the Wingnut blogosphere and the "mainstream media." It would make Monica tame by comparison! It would be everything we'd hear about every time we turn on the radio or watch television. It would be grist for endless hours of O'Reilly, Russert, and Limbaugh. Congress would demand investigations. Articles of Impeachment would be introduced.

Oh, but I forgot. "Jeff Gannon" ... is a Republican. So the "mainstream media," owned and operated by the Right Wing of the Republican Party, yawns a collective yawn. Nothing to see here, folks. Move along, no story here. And I guess I can't really blame them, after all, since, really, how unusual is a Republican who will do or say anything for money and power?

I guess it just goes to show you: A Ho is a Ho is a Ho.



A few more links, because I can't really do this story justice:
A man called Jeff
Why Gannon matters
'Jeff Gannon' Signs Off: Tells E&P He'll No Longer Talk to Press
Gonna Party Like It's 1998
"Jeff Gannon's" secret life
McClellan Tells 'E&P' He Didn't Know Guckert Used Fake Name for Nearly Two Years
Jeff Gannon owes back taxes
Jeff Gannon / James Guckert: a gay prostitute

Convoq ASAP Launches Again!

It's been just about a year since ASAP 1.0 shipped, and now I'm very pleased to say that we've launched our latest versions. The company demonstrated our new product at the DEMO Conference, where we demonstrated the last version of the product last year. Convoq ASAP is a much more mature product -- we've had a very good year to sand and polish it, and it shows. We're now offering two flavors of the product: ASAP Express is free and allows anyone to have a one-on-one videoconference with anyone else -- even somebody who hasn't installed the software! ASAP Pro allows up to 15 people to participate in your meetings, for only $250/year. It's a great product, and I'm proud to be a member of the team that created it. Try it!

Related links
Start-up offers Web conferencing on the cheap
Convoq Offers Free Web Conferencing
Web Meetings for Nothing, Collaborate for Free


[disclaimer: This site is my own personal site. The opinions expressed here represent my own, and not my employer, Convoq. I just wanted to mention that here in case it wasn't blazingly obvious.]

Arthur Miller

I'm not alone in being sorry to note the passing of Arthur Miller. Miller was a great playwright and a great American. His moral clarity and his willingness to question prevailing orthodoxy set an example for all of us. I have always been profoundly influenced by his writing. We need more such men today.

Now All He Needs Is A Space Ship

John Pultorak is my kind of nerd. This guy has built a replica of the Apollo Guidance Computer, the computer that flew on the Command Module and Lunar Module of the Apollo manned missions to the moon in the 1960s and 1970s.

Pultorak built the replica over the course of four years of nights and weekends, with some assistance from his son and a lot of understanding patience from his wife.

Recreating a 40-year-old computer is not an easy task, even if the hardware isn't exactly cutting-edge. Pultorak didn't just simulate the AGC (although that's what he did as a first step). He didn't even just emulate the AGC (i.e. build a modern computer and program it to pretend to be the AGC). He built real hardware which works just like the original. He didn't replicate the original in all respects, because he discovered that some of the parts which were used to build the original AGC weren't available any more. (Just try to find core rope memory these days.)

The AGC was definitely cutting-edge for its time (roughly 1962). It was the first digital computer to replace discrete transistors with Integrated Circuits, which were new and risky. It also was the first digital autopilot for any kind of piloted vehicle, and its user interface (the Display and Keyboard Unit or DSKY) was far ahead of its time, even if it seems a little quaint to us, and is one of the earliest examples of a real-time interactive user interface. In the 60s, after all, most computer users interacted with the machine via punch cards and printouts.

Others have implemented simulations of the AGC/DSKY. The Virtual AGC Project is one such effort, and the NASSP Project has implemented a DSKY in their Orbiter add-on (See this image). A more accessible, but less complete, partial implementation of a DSKY can be found here. I recommend it to anyone who is curious but doesn't want to be overwhelmed. It's a nice introduction, but it only works in Internet Explorer.

All of these efforts to replicate the space flight experience inside our modern computers are commendable, but for sheer geeky bragging rights, nothing really beats being able to say, as Pultorak can, "I built the real thing myself."

The Countdown


[enlarge]

More Search Strings

Since I started scanning the search strings which lead people to my blog, I have found it's a little addictive. Here are the latest entries.

• "gw bush orwellian slogans"


• "orwellian moments/current events" : Bush and Orwell : they really do go together like Freedom Fries and W Ketchup.


• "jasher 6000 end of world" : You're looking for Bible passages, and you came to my site? Whatever.


• "i'm so fat that i repulse my husband" : Heartbreak is never in short supply. I wish that wasn't true.

The Journey of a Privatized Social Security Dollar

This is George.



George is in charge of the biggest and most successful retirement insurance program in the world.

This is George's friend Ken. You might remember the company he used to run.



George has a terrific idea for you ...and Ken. Mostly for Ken. Here's what he'd like to do.

First, George will borrow a dollar from Ken. He'll do this by selling US Treasury Securities to Ken. Ken knows this is a pretty good investment, because they're backed by the full faith and credit of the United States, with a low rate of return but with virtually no risk.

(George has been borrowing a lot of dollars on your behalf from Ken lately, but that's another story.)

Next, George takes a dollar from you in Social Security payroll taxes. Right now, when you give that dollar to George, you're paying part of some retiree's monthly Social Security installment, and you expect that somewhere down the line, some other person will help pay yours when you retire. That's the contract that forms the basis of Social Security.

Well, George takes your dollar and gives it to the retiree just like he's always done. However, George says he's got a better idea for the second part of the deal: you know, the one where you get paid back that dollar when you retire.

Here's the deal, says George. (He almost said New Deal.) He's got that dollar that he just borrowed from Ken. He says, instead of giving it to you when you retire, he'll give it to you now, and then let you invest it in the markets. He says that he's sure that by investing it in the markets, you can earn a high rate of return. High enough, he says, that you'll end up with much more money in your retirement than you'd end up with if you just had Social Security.

Well, that sounds pretty good, doesn't it? Who wouldn't want more money when they retire, right? So you say, Sure, George. Sign me up. And you hold out your hand for that dollar.

Oh, no, you don't understand, says George. He didn't say he'd just give you your dollar back. See, what he meant was: He's going to invest this money in the markets for you. And then, when you retire, he'll give you that dollar back, plus whatever you earn on it from investing it in the market.

That's not exactly what George said at first, but what the hell. You're still going to get those great returns from investing in the market, right? So okay, you go along with it.

George takes the dollar he borrowed from Ken, and he puts it into an account with your name on it. Then, he uses that dollar, from that account, to buy a share of stock in Ken's company. Now, your account is just one of many millions of accounts that George controls this way, so when he starts buying stock in Ken's company, he's buying a lot of stock, and the price of the stock starts to rise. Pretty soon, the stock that George bought for you for one dollar is worth two dollars.

Ken has a few shares of his company's stock, too. Ken likes the fact that his stock price is going up, especially since he didn't pay anywhere near what you paid for the stock. But hey, as long as stock prices are rising, who cares? After all, it's worth a lot more than you paid for it, isn't it? So everybody's happy. Pretty soon, the stock that George bought for you for one dollar is worth three dollars.

At this point, George tells you that there's something else about your account you need to know about. Since it's a private account, he's going to charge you a quarter to administer it for you. Well, what the hell? After all, you put a dollar in, and now it's worth three dollars, which is two dollars more than you would have gotten back with old Social Security. So even minus a quarter, you're still way ahead of the game.

A few years later, Ken is found to have committed a few felonies in the conduct of his business.



It seems his company wasn't doing nearly as well as everyone thought it was doing. Ken was lying about the state of his company's finances in order to get people to keep buying his company's stock. That's called securities fraud.

Of course, Ken has known for a long time that the jig was up. (When you have friends like George, you know when the FBI is on its way.) That's why he sold all of his stock, at three dollars per share. Ken made a lot of money. But by the time word of his arrest and his company's collapse reaches you, the selling frenzy has already begun. Ken's company's stock is worth a penny a share.

Remember that dollar? All you have left of it is one cent.

There's nothing I can do about that, says George. Investment carries risk. You read the prospectus before you signed on.

That's right, says his friend Paul. "Part of the genius of capitalism is that people get to make good decisions or bad decisions. And they get to pay the consequences or to enjoy the fruits of their decisions."

Well, says George, now that it's time for you to retire, let's see how you did.

You have one penny in your account.

You owe George a quarter for managing the account. That doesn't depend on how well you did.

Oh, and remember the dollar you started the account with? George borrowed that dollar from Ken, but in thirty years, a 2.5% bond has doubled in value. Remember, George borrowed it in your name.

So now you owe Ken two dollars and George a quarter. Those are tax dollars, by the way, which makes George's IRS, in effect, Ken's collection agency.

You haven't got it? You were counting on that three dollar return? That's too bad, but George will be all too happy to help you out by liquidating your house or anything else you have of value.

Ken needs that money, after all.

See, after bankruptcy reorganization gets that company back on its feet, Ken has some penny stock to buy.

The Birth Tax

Hey Bush Voters! Now I have something new to thank you for!

See, I have a daughter on the way. In just a couple of months, she's going to enter this world, and thanks to years of reckless, irresponsible Republican fiscal policies, she's going to start life already $26,000 in debt!

Thanks, Bush Voters!

You can't blame the Democrats: as you can clearly see here, the Democrats have been the party of fiscal responsibility. Under Clinton, the deficit had nearly disappeared. We were even looking at budget surpluses when Bush came into office. Once you Bush voters had your say, that changed dramatically.


(Click the image for a larger view)

The Republicans have not only dramatically widened the budget deficit (which is only the yearly increase on the total national debt), they don't even pretend to care about its consequences any more. With complete domination of all three branches of government, they'd do something about it if they cared to. But thanks to the free pass you've given them, they don't think they have to do anything about it. In fact, Bush wants to add TWO TRILLION MORE to this pile of debt, in order to fund his Social Security piratization plan.

The result? My child already owes $26,000 to the federal government, and she hasn't even been born yet.

Call it The Birth Tax.

Thanks, Bush voters!

Since interest is accumulating on that money every day -- and since the Republicans haven't stopped their borrowing binge -- you can be sure that she'll owe a whole lot more by the time she's able to start paying that money back.

Bush voters, you may be too stupid to realize this, but there is only one way that money is going to be paid back. Those loans were taken out in our names, and it is our obligation to pay them back. The money will be collected in taxes and the debt will be paid. And you morons will probably think that the inevitable pain of increased taxes will be someone else's fault, because that's what Fox News will tell you.

There's another reason $26,000 is actually an understatement of the real value of the Birth Tax. See, that number is simply the national debt (about 7.6 TRILLION dollars) divided by the total population of the United States (about 295 million). But since Republican policies of the past twenty years are systematically moving the tax burden off of corporations (few of which pay any tax at all any more) and rich people (ditto), and on to working people, by the time my daughter is old enough to work, her tax burden will probably be much larger than mine is.

$26,000 is an amount which doesn't matter to a guy like Bush. If you're already rich, after all, $26,000 isn't so much. Daddy can write a check for $26,000 without breaking a sweat. Of course, for guys like Bush, who have never in their entire lives actually paid their fair share for anything, it's probably something that can be taken care of with a phone call to the right people. Right this way, sir; no, of course your ticket has already been paid for. Yes, sir. See, actually paying for things, that's for proles. Not for Bushes.

But for my daughter, $26,000 can be the difference between getting a good college education, or a mediocre one -- or none at all. It can be the difference between owning her first home at 25, or 45 -- or never. It can be the difference between getting first-rate care in a medical crisis, or poor care -- or none at all. It might literally be the difference between a long, healthy, good life, or a short and bad life. When you're just starting out, and you're middle-class like me and my daughter, $26,000 is a LOT of money.

This is the Birth Tax, the Bush tax, the most durable legacy of Republican hegemony. Long after George W. Bush has faded from memory, people will stay be paying for his profligacy and irresponsibility.

Thanks, Bush voters! You got your $300 checks?

Good, because guess what? It's not just my daughter that has to pay that back. For something like 98% of all you dopes out there, your kids will be paying it, too. And rich Republican kids will be laughing their asses off -- at you. Just like Bush is right now.

I'm Still Wrong About Bush

Damn! Who could've guessed that I'd still be wrong about George Bush!?

Here's the thing. I remember so well that night two years ago, when Bush stood up and delivered his Pre-Invasion Address 2003. I remember it like it was yesterday. He stood up resolutely and he said:

"...We will invade Iraq in order to remove a tyrant from power over his people, and then, instead of installing an American puppet regime, we will hold elections so that the Iraqi people can participate in their own government."

And so now, with the Iraqi vote behind us, does it really matter that the candidates in the election were anonymous? That whole swathes of the population were excluded from voting? That we have now spent 150 billion dollars (and counting) and 1,400 American servicemembers (and counting)? Does it matter that nobody seems to have any clue to getting out of Iraq?

NO! None of that matters! Not when it's measured against our ideals! Dammit, didn't you hear the man? He said it was about Democracy, damn it! We're spreading democracy!

But I was so wrong about Bush! See, when I heard him speaking in January 2003, I only thought I heard him say a lot about Weapons of Mass Destruction! I thought I heard him link Saddam Hussein to Al Qaida. I thought I heard him say

"Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa."

Invading Iraq was necessary to protect ourselves against terrorists! That's what I thought I heard him say in 2003.

(Now, I thought that was a crock of shit back then, and I was also 100% wrong about that, but that's a different story. I guess I just wasn't watching the right TV station for the State of the Union address, because I didn't hear Bush say anything about delivering Democracy to the Iraqis. But I suppose I'm one of those people who think that brown people can't run their own country, so maybe I wouldn't have heard it even if I'd tried.)

But just a few days ago, I found out what my problem is.

You see, my Memory Hole was clogged up. It seems I wasn't forgetting all the stupid things I was supposed to be forgetting. But now that we figured that out, everything's better, and boy am I sorry about all the shit I was spreading about George W. Bush. Now, repeat after me:

It was about Delivering Democracy. It was always about Delivering Democracy. There are no Weapons of Mass Destruction. There never were any Weapons of Mass Destruction. Bush never said anything about Weapons of Mass Destruction.

If you thought Bush told us we needed to invade Iraq as a matter of defending ourselves against terrorists armed with Saddam's Weapons of Mass Destruction, please do as I have done, and report to your nearest Memory Hole Cleaning Center (there are convenient kiosks in your local mall or Wal-Mart).