Blame the Republicans

I just posted this as a diary at Kos:

Amid all the criticism of the Democrats for their role in voting to permit Bush to go to war in Iraq, it seems to me that the Republicans in congress are getting off the hook.
If ANYONE had even a faint hope of deflecting Bush and Co from the rush to war, it was the Republican congressmen, not the Democratic ones. These people didn't do their job, and they are even more to blame because they actually could have influenced the war decision much more than the Democrats ever could have.
Imagine if a significant block of Republican senators and representatives, say 10 or 15, had gone to Bush in October, 2002 and said, "stop this pell mell rush to war, you've got to let the inspections work. Listen to what the anti-war marchers are saying, listen to the Security Council, don't send our boys into an illegal war" -- why, that point of view, forcefully expressed, might have made a difference. Instead, they went along to get along.