| | I also had a hard time picking between the options. At first, I wasn't for the war. Nor was I against it. There were some good reasons for and against it. I thought the war was justified, in the sense that it was morally an option. But whether it was worth fighting was not something that could be argued from a philosophical armchair. It required estimates of how difficult it would be to win, what would we do afterwards, what effect would it have on other countries, how costly would the alternative be, and so on. Unlike many who debated it, I was perfectly willing to recognize that I wasn't an expert on any of this, and an understanding of Objectivist philosophy didn't automatically grant me insight into all of the relevant facts. So I wasn't really for or against it.
As the topic continued to be debated, I noticed that most of the anti-war people were making horrific philosophical errors. They were each looking for some decisive principle that would make this war absolutely immoral and unjustified. They were looking for a philosophical premise that could effectively silence any questions of fact. Instead of a difficult case of applying many different principles to complex data, they wanted an all-or-nothing philosophy that could give an immediate and undisputed answer to the morality of this war.
I'll just list a few examples:
1.) Since our government is funded by taxes, everything it does is immoral.
2.) Saddam didn't initiate force against us, so we can't retaliate.
3.) Because we're not a perfectly free country, we have no right to interfere with other countries.
4.) The US is only justified in waging war if our own nation is in danger of falling.
5.) Since we supported Iraq decades ago, we have no right to oppose them now.
6.) Even though the government doesn't obey the Constitution in most things, in this one case Congress needs to declare war or it's immoral.
Obviously the list is a lot longer than this. But the point was the kind of debates going on. The anti-war side was trying to use philosophy to make information about the real world irrelevant. Facts and information weren't needed or wanted. Sloppy induction and investigation didn't matter. We could do everything with A is A and a lot of deduction. And the answers would be absolutes. The war was not simply a bad idea, it was fundamentally immoral!
Instead of using philosophy to gain a deeper understanding of the world, they were using it as an excuse to not have to look further.
So I started arguing against this bad methodology. The more I did, the more people assumed I was strongly for the war. That wasn't the case, though. It's just that the arguments from the people for the war were better in terms of methodology. Many were just arguing that the war was in fact morally justified, without arguing whether it was a good idea. Those who argued it was a good idea focused on the empirical data, trying to show that there were costs and benefits but the benefits were higher. There were only a handful of pro-war people who were using bad methodology. One ARI-type argued we should nuke the whole Middle East. Another looney argued we should exterminate all Muslims in the world. But these were uncommon on this site (and it's former incarnation), and the rest of the pro-war side did a fine job of arguing with them.
As the empirical case was made by the pro-war side, I became more of a believer that it was a good idea for the war, especially given what we knew then. We had a treaty with Saddam and he didn't fulfill his side of it. Specifically, he didn't prove that he had gotten rid of his WMD stockpile and programs. He routinely kicked out the observers, and launch attacks on our no-fly zone aircraft. We were spending something like $20 billion a year enforcing the no-fly zone. The economic sanctions were a joke and totally corrupt, and to the extent they were useful they were hurting the civilians in Iraq. And more importantly, while we let him flaunt his disregard of the treaty, we were communicating to the world that we don't have the resolve to do anything about it. This just encouraged the belief that we were a paper tiger. Continuing along that rode was likely to increase the threat to us. After nearly a decade of it, we got attacked in our own country.
There were plenty of costs as well. The expected lives lost. The possible instability and new balance of power in the area. The money. The opportunity cost. Stretching our military too thin. All good points. But in the end, I became convinced we couldn't maintain our then course of action indefinitely. It needed to be done, and the dismissal of the arms inspectors just pushed it near the top of the list.
Now after the war started is a different situation. There's much to disagree with. Our decision to stay there and create a democracy was very questionable. The biggest reason being that our country did not have the political will to enter a long term commitment there.
The results have been less than optimal, but the blame goes far. The Democrats decided this was a war they'd be willing to lose in order to gain political power here. The need for the war wasn't overwhelming, and the consequences of failure weren't immediate. So they started campaign to undermine it locally. And it doesn't take too much insight to recognize that the enemies abroad recognized this as an opportunity. If they could push the body count high enough for long enough, the Democrats would do what they couldn't do: end the war in their favor.
This symbiotic relationship between the Democrats and the terrorists had further implications. Iran felt free to get involved, as long as it had a modicum of deniability, they knew the Democrats would push that as far as possible. So whatever might have been, the situation only got worse with foreign involvement.
Given these offers of surrender conditioned on enough American's murdered, I find it difficult to put all the post-war blame on Bush. Nor was this entirely expected. Evil of this magnitude is not something you get used. Nor was it commonly predicted. Imagine if someone had warned about it before the war. How would it sound?
"This war is a mistake. While the military efforts may go smoothly, the real threat will occur in our own country. The opposition party will fight on behalf of the enemy just to make sure the President can't claim victory. They'll do everything they can to undercut morale, cut funding for the troops, encourage an insurgency, and declare that the evil side is the United States and its allies. They'll continue this until there are enough body bags full that the people will vote them into power. And they'll get away with treason by claiming this is not an American war, but simply Bush's war!"
How would it have turned out if we didn't have half the country rooting for the other side? Hard to say. There would probably still have been violence there. Al Qaeda would probably have still been there, although they might not have gotten as much support. Iran might have been less willing to risk involvement. More people there might have decided that if we weren't going to budge with violence, they better get the peace process going so they could get rid of us.
This is why it's hard for most people to simply state that they're for the war. Nobody can be for everything that's happened. Those who thought it was important to go in did not support the attempts within the US to undermine the war. Those who think we should stay do not think we should continue to dangle the carrot of surrender in exchange for American corpses. Nobody is happy with the entire situation. But if we're going to point fingers, I'd prefer to point it at those who are undermining the war and encouraging violence for political gain.
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Sunday, Monday, Tuesday - sorry, I forgot there are three days in a week. 
