CNN / Daphne Sashin

(CNN) -- Joyous homecomings flash on television screens with the return of troops from Iraq. But away from the jubilation, stories of loss, darkness and ambivalence emerge.

CNN iReport invited service members, contractors and others affected by the Iraq War to tell how it changed their lives. While some stories resonated with pride, out of the dozens of iReports submitted, a darker theme surfaced about whether the war was worth the price.

In their own words (edited for length and clarity), here are eight stories from eight years in Iraq, compiled from interviews and iReports that reflect the spectrum of feelings about the war:

'I don't know if it was all worth it'
Emily Trageser, 31, joined the Army in 2000 and deployed to Iraq for the 2003 invasion with the 101st Airborne Division. She returned to the United States in early 2004.

I don't think that the gravity of what we were doing ever really hit me. I was just a silly 23-year-old, excited to be a part of something big with one of the best-known units in the United States Army.

I was like a little kid on a family trip with my nose pressed against the window, not wanting to miss anything on this grand adventure.

When I contrast my experience with what happened later on in the war, it makes me feel guilty that my time there was so easy. Every time I heard about a soldier from my old unit who was hurt or killed, I felt a tremendous anger but was unsure of where to direct it. I find it embarrassing when someone thanks me for my service, because I feel like I didn't really do anything compared to some. But I have the memories of my time there, which I treasure.

I don't know if it was all worth it. I know now that the invasion was based on flawed intelligence, although at the time, everyone thought that Saddam Hussein was developing weapons of mass destruction. Everyone. So we liberated Iraq from a madman, and saved them from perhaps a later, worse fate.

So much blood, and where are the Iraqi people now? Are they in a better situation? We want to know, we want reassurance, that all the American lives, both lost and ruined, were worth it. I can't say.

'A factory producing painful lives'
Nicholas Panzera, 29, deployed to Mosul and Baghdad, Iraq, from August 2005 until November 2006. He served with the 1st Battalion, 17th Infantry Regiment from Fort Wainwright, Alaska.

Baghdad during that time was a complete firestorm, and four days from going home to Alaska, orders came from the president extending our deployment indefinitely. To help make sense of my thoughts and emotions I wrote poems. Some were long, some very short, and each one meant more to me than any weapon I had to carry while protecting myself in that nightmare.

a landscape that spits acid in your face,
destroys civilization with its sourness.
god has no place here.
yet the people embrace him as they are whipped.
evil smells swim through the hairdryer heat.
grit bounces off the eyelids of a shunned existence.
smashed and burned.
the souls of many exit through this place.
a factory producing painful lives,
one after another.
-- from "Land of Pain," 2006

I will never be able to forget how I saw human beings treat one another with such hateful intentions. Where families were tortured and murdered for following one religious doctrine or another. Where the police robbed the very people they were hired to protect with their lives. Where murderers would be freed by relatives in the Iraqi judicial system.

We removed one corruption and replaced Saddam Hussein with officials that were just as murderous and evil.

'Feeling like you're a bad person'
Marc Loiselle, 32, served as an infantry platoon leader in Iraq during two tours between 2003 and 2006. He is now a schoolteacher in Seattle and doesn't usually tell people he is an Army veteran.

The secret about combat -- what not even the harshest anti-war cynic will tell you -- is coming home and walking around every day feeling like you're a bad person.

All things surrounding Iraq continue to be the black hole in the otherwise loving light surrounding me in my life. Though life was difficult when I was in combat, I never really suffered until I got home. I lost everything. My wife, my place to live, my friends, and the future that I had once seen.

It was not worth the lives. To say nothing of the money, material, energy and effort. It was not worth the lives of my friends to take the lives of someone else's friends so that they would not take the lives of someone else's friends. It was not worth liberating Iraqis so that warlords, thugs and gangsters could rule over Iraqis. There were no WMDs, or ties to al Qaeda, or ties to 9/11.

We talk about the superiority of our culture, but then we invade their country and set them at each other's throats like animals.

The Iraq War, from its planning to our withdrawal, as a whole, has been a fiasco, an embarrassment, a disaster.

'Proud to be a part of something'
Tyler, 24, is a platoon leader in the Army. He spent a year in Iraq, 2010-2011, helping to shut down more than 40 U.S. military bases. He asked not to use his full name because he is still in the Army.

This was my first deployment to Iraq and the amount accomplished is simply astonishing. As bases closed and troops left, the U.S. military was humming at full speed. As we departed, I have never felt more proud in my life to be a part of something.

Being deployed also gave me a greater sense of just how good America truly is ... from the air and scenery to the security. When was the last time an American citizen worried about an IED on one of our highways? Or when the temperature hit 135? We are truly blessed, and I feel sorry for anyone who does not realize this.

Any war that has been fought is worth the sacrifices. I trust in my country as well as God that when we are asked to fight, the end will be a just cause. Is that the case for Iraq? Sure. We are talking about a dictator who killed his own people and suppressed their voices.

CLICK HERE FOR MORE