0 simpson-bowles, and they could never openly clear for obama care or the ryan budget. and the debt also -- >> hopes for a grand bargain were dashed. >> yes, the same thing, it is unexamined on some level. secondarily, if you say deficit reduction, the partisan are leeched out. we are talking about whether it will work to balance the budget. if along the way 35 million become uninsured, that's sad but we don't talk about it because cbo didn't mention it in the score. that's the great trick of paul ryan to recognize if you only talk about budget deficit, where does your budget put the deficit 20, 30 years from now, the amount of things you sneak in under that cloak that you can never put into the conversation fear. those that have said have been wrong, two years ago was supposed to be then. at least they're backing off it being so soon. that's eroding the underlying nature of the argument. >> does this help explain why they're doing nothing, the debt isn't a big deal? >> they a sequester, what more do they need. >> ezra klein gets the last word. "the ed show" is next. good evening, americans, welcome to "the ed show." i'm michael eric dyson. elizabeth warren takes a stand for working class americans. michele bachmann has seen the light on infrastructure and might be getting off the appalachain trail and heading back to washington and a southern pastor makes a radical stand for justice. but tonight, we start with the tenth anniversary of the ed show. let's get to work. retirement when he disagreed with the bush cheny strategy. if we are truly remembering what it was like ten years ago today, we can't forget the millions of voices who opposed this war and attempts made to marginalize them. if you were a public figure, it was not a wise time to speak out against the administration. actress jeanne was called an iraqi sympathizer. >> saddam must love you and i'm sure -- >> don't even try and do that -- i'm not a saddam hussein apoll gist -- i don't think he said is that great news. >> michael moore was booed off the stage for denouncing the war. this is a war that cost the lives of anywhere from 110,000 to 1 million civilians. today is not a day to cheer for success. but it is a day to remember those who fought hard to avoid the war's tragic consequences. get your cell phones out. i want to know what you think. tonight's question, will the architects of the iraqi war ever admit they made a mistake? text a for yes, b for no to 67622 or go to our blog. i'll bring you the results later in the snow. i'm joined now by congresswoman diona diget. getting your name mixed up here. i'm so hyped to get to this point. congresswoman, you were one of 133 members of the house to vote against this war. take us back to that day and tell us what was going through your mind? >> you know, for me, i'm elected to congress and i take every vote seriously, but the vote to invade a sovereign nation, put our fighting americans at risk and go into this country, it has to be taken very seriously. and i've had several of these votes, of course. but what i look at is this country a threat to our national security. we had the classified briefings. with don rumsfeld and cheney and the whole group. they kept saying we have the weapons of mass destruction. there was a pesky little group of us and we kept saying show us the evidence. show us the evidence. they say, don't worry, we have the evidence. i'm not going to vote to send our fighting men and women into another country and waste all those lives and billions of dollars. just based on frankly on dick cheney's assurance, so i voted no. people did not believe that the white house would lie to them, and so they believed that iraq had these weapons, but they didn't and there was never proof they did. >> was it the fact there was no proof that led to your vote? were you objecting to the rush to judgment without imperical proof. >> al-qaeda was the ones that invaded our sovereignty, killed our citizens and took down the world trade center on that terrible day and i was convinced we had the evidence that afghanistan an the taliban were hiding al-qaeda. when the white house came to us with iraq, they said you have to trust us. i said i'm a member of congress. we have to take this vote very seriously and i'm not going vote to go into this nation and put our men and women at risk as well as the civilians there, as well as the reputation in the world and not to mention we're in the financial problems we're in because we fought that war and the other war off budget for ten years. >> sure. >> so, those were all things that went through our minds and ultimately, an act to go to war is an act of conscious. and i think members of congress have to take that the most seriously of any vote they make and there wasn't the evidence and that's why i voted no. >> given the violent downpour of opposition to your dissent, you take a lot of heat. did it ever make you question your judgment? thinking man, maybe i should have gone along? >> well, i never had a moment of regret and as of course the troops marched towards baghdad and they found no chemical weapons, no nuclear weapons, no weapons of mass destructions, it became really clear those weapons did not exist. of course, i became more and physician of the soul like diana degette, thank you so much. now to dr. james peterson, msnbc analyst and director of africana studies. professor, millions oppose the war, but as you know, and i'm sure you remember, their voices were significantly marginalized. give us a sense of how that happened. >> there's a lot of context here. we have to start with the fact that the sort of american ethos in response to 9/11 was a sort of patriotism, people not in line with the government and a very war hawkish administration seemed to be anti-american. so in that environment, the voices that were speaking out against this war, but in that environment, those voices could be muffled and people were being painted as being anti-american because they were pro peace. >> right. mrs. walsh, we saw what donald rumsfeld said on twitter. we saw dick cheney say he would do it all over again and not acknowledge any mistakes. >> the main fault -- i don't spend a lot of time thinking about my faults i guess would be the answer. >> no kind of political introspection there. but will history let these men off the hook for what they did? >> no, they're going down in history for a horrible, terrible war. i was going to say a lapse of judgment, but it was not a lapse of judgment. it was a deliberate act. they cooked the evidence. they browbeat people. they would karl rove as their political hench men. the vote was scheduled on the eve of the elections deliberately. i don't want to let democrats off the hook. 29 senate democrats voted to authorize the use of force. some apologized later like john kerry. some brave people came out against it as you showed. barbara boxer, dick durbin, paul wellstone, but there is a tendency among democrats that really worries me. it's to act as though maybe their patriotism is possibly going to be called into question and they're always appeasing these bullies who question their very americanness and we saw that over and over at 9/11 and particularly in the run-up to war. it was a little bit frightening to be against the war as i was. we weren't really singled out and ridiculed, but we were right. they will go down in history as having done the wrong thing. it requires a lot of vigilance to make sure nothing like that happens again. >> given what the congresswoman said earlier, are we still at risk despite their bold and creative witness of a march to war of this magnitude or is there more accountability today? >> we would hope so. joan is absolutely right. there's bipartisan culpability that dates back to the clinton administration. just look at the scorecard and this is where the american people have to step up and understand what has happened and what we have to take on in terms of our accountability here. 134,000 iraqi civilians. not soldiers. 4500 of our own soldiers. 18 of soldiers who are veterans come back home are committing suicide on a daily basis. when you add the $2 trillion, we're talking about an extraordinary cost in human lives and resources and at the end of the day, we didn't have to do this and it wasn't effective. when you look at iraq now as a nation, it has not progressed in the way the liberators said it would progress. i hope the people open their eyes on this occasion to reflect very, very thoughtfully about what has occurred here and it's only doing the people of the united states who can make sure this never happens again. >> the justification on the other side has been look, saddam hussein was a monster. he was evil. getting rid of him was not a bad thing and if that was the ultimate consequence of the iraq war, then so much the better. what do you say to that kind of twisted logic? >> i think there are many monsters, sadly, in the world as we both know and we don't go around invading sovereign countries that did no wrong to us in order to topple them and we have lots of monsters. we've had lots of monsters who remained our friends. >> exactly. >> i just think, i do think we have more oversight now and the people are more skeptical and that it's harder. the same people wopted us to go to war, digging in appeals over, i think there's a latent antiwar movement. i think we will not go through it again soon, so that's the good news. but it requires vigilance. >> sure. people tend to forget that frankenstein was not the name of the monster. it was the doctor who created it. >> some are monsters of our own making. >> thank you all so very much. >> thank you. >> remember to answer tonight's question at the bottom of the screen and share your thoughts on twitter. and on facebook. i want to know what you think. massachusetts senator elizabeth warren tells a restaurant owner about raising the minimum wage. we'll flip that one, next. i don't make any decisions about who to hire without going to angie's list first. you'll find reviews on home repair to healthcare written by people just like you. with angie's list, i know who to call, and i know the results will be fantastic. angie's list -- reviews you can trust. my name is sunshine and i have three beautiful girls. i like taking advil® for a headache. it nips it in the bud. and i can be that mommy that i want to be. ♪ [ male announcer ] take action. take advil®. ♪ try running four.ning a restaurant is hard, fortunately we've got ink. it gives us 5x the rewards on our internet, phone charges and cable, plus at office supply stores. rewards we put right back into our business. this is the only thing we've ever wanted to do and ink helps us do it. make your mark with ink from chase.