When Robin Cook, Britain's leader of the House of Commons, gave his moving resignation speech to a crammed house of parliament two weeks ago, he unwittingly indicted my home county for bringing the world to the brink of annihilation."What has come to trouble me," Cook said, "is the suspicion that if the hanging chads in Florida had gone the other way and Al Gore had been elected, we would not now be about to commit British troops to Iraq."

In other words, many of your grandparents should be blamed for the war in Iraq. This is because many of your grandparents are my neighbors - and I live in Palm Beach County, Fla.

Located an hour east of sugar cane country, where migrant hands toil in the black soil along the shore of Lake Okeechobee, Palm Beach County used to be associated with Kennedys at play, the occasional sex scandal and boatloads of money.

Now, ballot bedlam has left an indelible mark on Palm Beach County that adds to and eclipses previous notions some might have of my home town. Moreover, it vaulted the Seinfeldian stereotype of the retiree to levels of absolute authenticity. And I must admit, in 2000 there was more than a degree of truth to that stereotype of the "voting-challenged."

For years, I've seen your grandparents at the supermarket. I've evaded their Town Cars and Cadillacs in parking lots. I've gritted my teeth every time I overheard them squabbling over 10 cents at a deli. And it came as no surprise to me when these incredibly dense, annoying, but generally good-hearted people didn't know how to poke holes correctly.

You see, Gore, Cook's would-be savior, received plenty of Palm Beach half-votes, votes that fell short of being clean holes, ending up instead as "pregnant," "dimpled" or "indented" chads in the 2000 election.

And, yes, all those extra votes to Pat Buchanan prove that voting in Palm Beach County was like decoding a Chinese restaurant's menu - but one would think South Floridians would be seasoned professionals at such tasks, given, of course, they remembered to bring their collapsible reading glasses.

What Cook did with his resignation speech was publicly connect the dots between the product of elderly Florida's error and the war in Iraq or, as Palm Beach Post metro columnist Frank Cerabino said, "from ballots of mass confusion to weapons of mass destruction."

Do we really need any more shame?

No one in America, save the president himself, has more of a stake in the outcome of this war than the people of Palm Beach County. This is because we are almost solely responsible for the outcome of the election.

Being a Democrat in Florida sucked in 2000. It meant feeling that more Floridians actually went to the polls with the intention to vote for Al Gore - but miraculously, George W. Bush received more votes statewide.

The irony in this, of course, was while Florida's Democrats, after enduring through Bush senior and Jeb Bush (our governor), were vehemently committed to "stay out the Bushes," they ended up getting lost in the briar patch.

Now, in 2003, in an essentially unilateral war, simply being a Floridian and, worse, a resident of the most despised county in the Union really sucks. It means that our electoral incompetence bred a potentially devastating war.

I hope then, for the sake of my county, that the war goes smoothly and quickly. If not, Palm Beach County may be more than just the butt of some bitter Democrat's trite jibe - it may mean the security at your grandparents' gated, active-adult, country club community might need to be beefed up. There are a lot of angry people out there and, sooner or later, they too will figure out how to connect the dots.