The "de facto green light from Democrats" was given to push Hussein to open to serious inspections, 5 months before the war.

This "green light" came a month before the UN did the same, and followed reports from the CIA and other secret services re: Hussein apparently reconstituting WMD programs (the chemical/biological ones being more likely), along with such fallacious info from Powell about longer-range missile launchers & other scary disinformation.

Reprise of Powell's performance before the UN Security Council in Nov 2002 here, as bad or worse than his performance in 2003, along with the usual smears against anyone who disputed the "overwhelming evidence".

That Blix did come in and find proscribed missile components that he destroyed weeks before the war should give balance to this one-sided view. Even as late as Jan 2003, Blix thought that Hussein still had some illegal WMD's (bio-chemical), but as cooperation improved from January, he felt confident that all the weapons had been been destroyed.

There was some reasonable speculating about centrifuge tubes that was not cleared up until well into the war.

I'm also wondering your take on Israeli support for the 2nd Iraq War (even as mainstream American Jews in general opposed the war).

But mostly, I think this shared blame with Democrats is complete bullshit. There was certainly reasonable concern that Hussein was twisting our tail, and that any large-scale mobilization to the Mideast to pressure him would be met by 3 weeks of cooperation with inspectors followed by another standoff and re-deployment of troops, wasting months and a billion dollars. So supporting renewed inspections came to be seen as requiring the option of launching strikes if Hussein started playing his well-known games.

Then Bush & neocons set up the Democrats via lies so that even though we presumed Bush was ginning up the facts to go to war, there were still serious issues that denial of war powers would be gambling with American (or hey, Israeli, security - what's the difference?). Yeah, Hussein might even hit Cyprus with a missile, which after the EU's blunder allowing (Greek) Cyprus in, was then something we should presumably worry about.

Democratic ownership of the 2nd Gulf War became complete with the 2008 campaign, as the shining knight Obama faced down the old corrupt school Hillary. Obama, who'd given his famous Sept 15, 2002 street corner speech as an Illionois state legislator without security clearance or passport, had blithely declared Hussein as completely non-threatening to his neighbors - something Israel undoubtedly disagreed with and I find laughable, even if I often disagree with Israel's frequent hyperbole on the matter - in September 2002, the matter was fraught with "unknown unknowns", as Rumsfeld might say, and post-9/11, those unknowns from a Hussein who often threatened or invaded his neighbors and attacked his own, and in general played the no longer tenable unpredictable wild card for the region.

So why Democrats continue to take umbrage at the Oct 2002 vote to return the inspectors, when the real crime occurred with the Mar 2003 invasion after Blix had cleared the Iraqis - well, it's stupidity. Just like in 2009, when the Dems should have wrapped the crash around Bush's neck instead of "looking forward", we should have wrapped the unjustified Iraqi War around Bush's neck instead of following Rahm's advice and shutting up about it. (Note that those who ignored Rahm's advice in 2004 survived much better than those who tried to play the security card - history isn't kind for those who try to sit on the fence)