Definitely agree with you on both of those steps. That said, I think the reason Civil War turned out as it did was that so many of the writers disagreed with the premise of it and went out of their way to portray the pro-registration side/forces as not just wrong, but flat-out evil. Of course, Marvel wanted to insist that Iron Man was in the right all along, even as more and more violations of civil, constitutional, and even human rights were being committed by his side, so that was how we got the ending we got. Not helping matters, either, was that the writer of the main miniseries was on record at one point saying he actually went with what he thought American readers would prefer in a post-9/11 environment --- security over freedom, basically a big middle finger to Americans in real life for looking the other way on expansions of government power and law enforcement authority in the wake of 9/11 that abridged civil liberties and constitutional rights.