Shoulda, woulda, coulda. With the information the government had in 2003, the Iraq War was the right choice. It's easy to sit here in 2013 and complain.
Lots of (smart) people opposed the Iraq War in 2003.
Consider the evidence that was provided to the government in 2003 (and by the government to the people in 2003), which was that the Iraqi regime, which had been historically quite hostile to American interests and had been extremely brutal to the population of Iraq, was in fact developing weapons of mass destruction. That this was the information available of course constitutes what can be called the greatest failure of the CIA in its history; nevertheless, it was the case. And with this information, the main reason people opposed the war in the US was either out of a general sense of opposition to Bush; out of a sense of general opposition to war (which would've also kept us out of the Gulf War or Vietnam had it prevailed in the past); or, certain farsighted politicians (and I personally believe Obama fits into this category, because unless this is an issue he's involved considerably on (possible, I guess) in the context of his current foreign policy opposition to the 2003 Iraq invasion makes very little sense) foresaw that the war would become an expensive drag (which wasn't difficult to foresee, even at the time; it's just that the threat this posed to the country was less than that, the CIA of the time believed, which was posed by a fortified Hussein regime) and intended to win trust out of opposing the war so they could get elected later. Which was a smart plan, certainly.
