Turkey's parliament voted not to allow Bush to use Turkey as a base for military operations aimed at installing a democracy in Iraq. Opposition members explained that they "had seen U.S. schematics of the Iraqi government," and that the plan to install democracy in Iraq was doomed to failure because, among other things, it relied almost exclusively on the availability of representative widgets and gerrymandering cogs.

Members of the Bush Administration expressed frustration at the loss of military bases in Turkey. One senior White House official wondered, "Where are we going to put all of these Florida voting machines?"