It's the one year anniversary of the US invasion of Iraq. That makes it a very good time to review how public opinion on Iraq has evolved since the invasion, going from strong support to the question-laden, how-do-we-get-out-of-this-mess view that characterizes the public today.

CBS News has usefully summarized some of the relevant data in a report, "Shifting Opinions on Iraq". The report points out that Bush's approval rating skied to 73 percent when US troops entered Baghdad. In the latest CBS News poll, it's down to 51 percent, a drop of 22 points.

Similarly, Bush's approval rating on Iraq reached 79 percent after the fall of Baghdad. But in the latest CBS News poll, it's down to 49 percent, a decline of 30 points.

What happened? After all, the Iraq army was beaten in short order and in December Saddam Hussein was captured. But, as far as the public was concerned, Saddam's capture did little to remedy the three big problems with our occupation of Iraq: casualties, financial costs and WMD (the abundance of the first two and the lack of the third). It is these problems that have undercut--and continue to undercut--public support for the Iraq war and occupation. Therefore, since Saddam’s capture clearly did not solve any of these problems--far from it--his capture, in the end, did little to change increasingly negative public views of the Iraq situation.

These negative views include the following. According to CBS News polls, a majority says “the result of the war with Iraq” was not worth “the loss of American life and other costs” (51 percent to 42 percent). A majority (55 percent) also believes that, as a result of the war with Iraq, the US is either less safe from terrorism (19 percent) or there has been no change (36 percent), rather than that we are safer from terrorism (42 percent). In addition, 61 percent say that the Bush administration was either hiding elements (45 percent) or mostly lying (16 percent) about what they knew about Iraq’s WMD. The public also believes that the the Bush administration intentionally exaggerated intelligence findings to build support for the war (59 percent), rather than interpreted that intelligence accurately. And, it’s fascinating to note that, at this late date, 57 percent still think either that the Iraq threat could have been contained (45 percent) or that it wasn’t a threat at all (12 percent), compared to 42 percent who believe Iraq’s threat merited immediate military action.

Data from other public polls show the public believes that Bush does not have a clear plan for handling the Iraq situation, thinks the level of casualties the US is sustaining is unacceptable and strongly opposes the extra $87 billion that was allocated by the US Congress last November for the Iraq occupation. They also overwhelmingly believe that capturing Osama Bin Laden and breaking up al-Qaeda should be the central front in the war on terrorism, not capturing Saddam and establishing democracy in Iraq.

So there's been quite a shift in public opinion since the euphoric days last April when the US troops stormed into Baghdad and the statue of Saddam came down. One can summarize these data by saying the public now has two big questions about Iraq and the war on terror for which it's seeking answers.

(1) How do we get out of Iraq? That's not to say the public wants the US to precipitately withdraw and let Iraq degenerate into total chaos. But the public does want to know how the casualty count can be drastically reduced, the financial and military burden shared and the US occupation come to an eventual and successful close.

(2) How can we stop terrorism? The public was always unclear on the relationship between US national security and the invasion of Iraq. The failure to find WMD in Iraq has underscored those doubts, as has the continuing failure to dismantle the Al Qaeda terror network. The latter failure has, of course, been recently and bloodily illustrated by the March 11 train bombing in Spain.

Current Bush administration policy has no good answers to either one of these questions. That suggests public support for the Iraq occupation and for the administration's Iraq-centered approach to the war on terror will continue to ebb, until such answers are forthcoming.

It also suggests some lessons for the Kerry campaign. Kerry must avoid anything--like tangential comments about foreign leaders' presidential preferences--that takes the heat off Bush for not providing these answers. How do we get out of Iraq? How do we stop terrorism? Bush does not have convincing answers other than to continue doing what already isn't working and voters should be relentlessly reminded of this. The key is to keep Bush on the defensive, rather than letting him push back on peripheral comments and issues that connect to his general status as commander-in-chief, rather than to his specific failures in the field.

The other side of this, of course, is that Kerry needs his own answers to these very questions. What is Kerry's plan to get the US out of Iraq? What is Kerry's plan to stop terrorism? His recent speech at George Washington University certainly provides elements of answers to these questions, but it was focused more on "protecting our military families in times of war", as the speech's title put it. That personnel-focused approach to strengthening our military and connecting to military families and veterans has much to recommend it (see David Kusnet's piece on The New Republic's website), but it does not fully answer these two questions.

I suggest he do so.