The occupation of Iraq isn’t getting any easier and neither is the conversation over the case for the war that preceded it. This past Wednesday, President Bush backed away from suggestions that Saddam Hussein was involved with the attacks of 9/11, something implied by Vice President Cheney last week. That may have come as a surprise to many Americans, nearly 70 percent of whom, according to a Washington Post poll, still see a link.

As American forces awake to their twenty-sixth week in Iraq, the Bush administration finds itself in the awkward position of having, once again, to make the case for war. Support for the effort in Iraq in the U.S. remains strong, but as its cost rises, and presidential politics heat up, the shifting rationales for war themselves become an issue in American credibility and the occupation’s staying power.

Click the “Listen” link to hear about the winding case for war, and its implications for the U.S. occupation of Iraq.

Guests:

Andrew Kohut, Director of the Pew Research Center for The People & The Press

Mike Shuster, NPR diplomatic correspondent

John Mueller, Professor of Political Science, Ohio State University

Steven Van Evera, Professor of Political Science, MIT