A grim milestone approaches as California currently stands at 299 deaths in Iraq.
This picture is dated from the summer of 2002, during the run-up to the war, just a few months before Representative Ellen Tauscher voted with George Bush on Iraq. Just days before the vote, Gwen Ifill interviewed Ellen Tauscher during the debate over the resolution. Representative Tauscher defended the resolution and the deal she cut for her support:
And I am happy to say that have we moved this resolution very far away from where he where it was originally, which was almost a blank check and where we effectively gave the president a rubber stamp -- where Congress has really inserted itself - and I think that's in the best interest of the American people.
That's right, the deal Tauscher cut was for congress to act as a rubber stamp for the Administration. By doing this Tauscher failed during the most important issue of our time:
Ellen Tauscher (D-Calif.), chairwoman of the moderate New Democrat Network, faulted the administration on its representation of intelligence, but refused to blame the White House entirely.
"It's clear now that they cherry-picked intelligence, amplified some things, played down dissent. [But] we all got it wrong," she said.
That's just not true, not all of us did get it wrong. The problem is that Tauscher marginalized and ignored the voices who have since been proven correct.
Today, Atrios recalled the absurdity during the run-up to the war:
What was so frustrating at the time was not simply that a bunch of otherwise intelligent people seemed to have come to the horribly wrong conclusion that invading Iraq was a good idea. What was more frustrating is that there was a collective blindness to the dishonest and destructive way the war was sold, that it seemed not to bother these people that the multiple and shifting dishonest rationalizations for war suggested that there was something deeply wrong with the whole endeavor. It was frustrating that people who supported the war were happy to climb on board not just with the war but with the truly awful people who were the architects of both the war and the propaganda war which, among other things, involved tarring war opponents as brutal-dictator lovers. It was frustrating that they signed up for the whole goddamn enchilada.
Frequently it's been pointed out that they shouldn't have trusted these people to "do it right." But more than that it should have been obvious that they shouldn't have trusted these people to "do the right thing." They made clear during that time that they were, in fact, very bad people.
I think that is just one of many examples of people in the reality based community fearing what happens when Ellen Tauscher cuts deals with these people. That is why people were so concerned about her meeting with Bush. Reports of the meeting had Karl Rove taking notes on the overwhelming success of Bush kissing up to her.
In an article covering her war vote in February of 2003, Ellen Tauscher shrugged off the criticism by saying, "I sleep fine at night."
After the 300th Californian makes the ultimate sacrifice, will she still sleep fine at night?
