A year later, teens weigh in on Iraq: high-school students are taking a second took at the war, with many adopting more nuanced views about not only Iraq, but also America's rote in the world.

A little more than a year ago, when schoolhouses across the nation echoed with debate about the imminent war, two freshmen at Normal Community High School in Illinois shared a moral certainty that it had been the duty of the United States to invade Iraq and destroy weapons of mass destruction. Today they take opposite sides on the issue.

Anthony Hamer feels vindicated. "When we captured Saddam, that reduced the threat," he said in a class discussion. What threat, countered Alex Oswald, who, like Anthony, is now a sophomore. "The government said Iraq's weapons put us in danger, but now they say there may not have been any. So the government has somewhat destroyed its credibility."

For millions of American students, the invasion of Iraq brought a torrent of hard lessons about war, contemporary history, and big-power politics. Thousands of school teachers viewed the invasion as a teachable moment and they offered crash courses in Mideast geography and Islamic history, and civics lessons on how a democracy goes to war.

A year later, the lessons continue, with a strong majority of teenagers--62 percent in a Gallup Poll conducted from January 22 to March 9--continuing to support the decision of the United States and its allies to invade Iraq.

But many students who were once vehemently for or against the war now offer more nuanced or even changed opinions. In recent months, students' debates have focused on how America should secure the peace and what international role the U.S. ought to play. In some schools, the realities of war have become less abstract, with returning soldiers describing the fear, the fatigue, the daily fact of death.

IRAQ VIA THE WEB

Technology has also brought the war closer. Students discuss the conflict over the Internet with teenage Iraqi pen pals, who tell them day-to-day details of their lives, including their brushes with violence. Others, in overseas study programs, have felt the sting of reproach from foreign teenagers who resent America's assertive foreign policy.

The fascination with Iraq has not gone away, and many teachers say it has stimulated even broader interest in international affairs.

Students who debated Iraq in their world studies class in Normal, a university town 114 miles southwest of Chicago, said they previously paid little attention to foreign news. But many now follow the Iraq story on TV and the Internet, and a few read The Pantagraph, the local newspaper. Others read books on foreign policy.

A TWO-FRONT WAR?

They are not alone. Students at high schools from Connecticut to California have been following the invasion's turbulent aftermath.

The students in this article discussed their views in interviews that were conducted before the recent outbreak of serious violence in Iraq, which began with the brutal murder on March 31 of four American contractors in Falluja, a center of resistance to the U.S. led occupation. A few days later, followers of a radical Shiite cleric began attacking coalition forces in a Baghdad slum, as well as in southern Iraq, where many Shiites live.

In response, the U.S. mounted some of the largest military operations since the fall of Saddam's government a year ago, with coalition forces suffering heavy casualties, including 12 Marines killed on a single day in early April.

It has opened the possibility that the U.S. may now be facing a two-front war: one against Sunni fighters, many of them followers of Saddam Hussein, in Baghdad and the surrounding countryside, including Falluja; and the other against Shiite militias. The Shiites are the nation's largest religious group. Along with the Kurds, who are concentrated in the north, the Shiites were harshly persecuted under Saddam, and until recently, seemed to accept at least a temporary coalition presence.

Now, however, coalition troops are facing the toughest test yet of their resolve to put into effect a U.S. backed blueprint for political transition in Iraq, with the transfer of sovereignty to an Iraqi government set for June 30.

While the military task of restoring order has involved fierce fighting, U.S. commanders say they have no doubt they can achieve their mission. President Bush, in a news conference on April 13, insisted that the U.S. will not change course in Iraq, despite the recent violence.

One student who now sees grays where once the war was black and white is Erin McCann, a senior at John Mall High School in Walsenburg, Colo., 150 miles south of Denver. Most students there were "pro-war, kill 'era all, blow 'em up," she says, and when she stood in the cafeteria during an assembly a year ago to speak in favor of the invasion, they roared their approval. Students remained largely silent, however, when her friend Karen Bressan argued that it could be destabilizing to invade Iraq without provocation.

Last fall, after it became clear that America faced a bloody insurgency and that no doomsday weapons were turning up, the two girls discussed the war again. Bressan says she could not resist the temptation to gloat.

"Honey," Bressan says she told McCann, "unless you can show me something new, I'd say I win this argument." McCann says that she learned the importance of being skeptical of government claims, but that she is still hopeful the war will have a positive result.

"The more information I get, the more my views shift," she says, "but I still think Saddam was an evil man. So maybe this war will turn out to be a good thing."

DIFFERENT VIEWS ABROAD

American views differ significantly from those in much of the rest of the world, as some students, including David Poli, learned firsthand. A year ago, Poli, then a senior at Maine South High School in Park Ridge, Ill., was studying Iraq in a social studies class and concluded that President Bush was correct in ordering a pre-emptive invasion. "We needed to be aggressive," he says.

Then Poli spent the summer studying in Italy. "I wasn't around Americans at all, but with students from around the world," Poll said. "They all said that Bush was selfish and greedy to have invaded Iraq. It was very different from the way people view it here. Now I think Bush did this war for oil. That's my basic opinion."

Students at the Metropolitan Learning Center, a public school in Bloomfield, Conn., have gotten a firsthand viewpoint on post-war Iraq--over the Internet.

Katie Loubier, a junior, said she has exchanged e-mail messages with Ruba, an Iraqi girl with whom she struck up a friendship. Before the invasion, a satellite television linkup enabled students in Baghdad and Connecticut to talk about the impending war and other topics, like hip-hop music. Since then, Loubier has become so concerned for Ruba's safety that she cannot bear to watch news reports out of Baghdad. "Ruba's house was kind of shot up a bit recently," she says.

Students learned another lesson as well. During the March 3, 2003, television linkup, the Iraqi students betrayed no dissatisfaction with their government. But after the invasion, during a second linkup, at least one Iraqi student confided that she had not spoken candidly before the war. She was glad to be rid of Saddam's regime.

MARSHALING EVIDENCE

"They couldn't say what they thought the first time because they were under control," says Craig Kulas, also a junior at Metropolitan. "But in June, some Iraqi students said they liked that the U.S. had gotten rid of Saddam. So it was interesting to see the change."

Kulas was outnumbered by antiwar classmates. At Stafford High School in Falmouth, Va., Tiffanie Woods and two others who opposed the war were outnumbered in a global issues class debate.

Woods says that taught her the importance of marshaling strong evidence to support one's arguments, a lesson that in her view President Bush did not heed before the war. "I don't think President Bush had sufficient evidence to go to war, even though we did capture Saddam," says Woods, whose mother is an Army sergeant. "I feel like they lied to us on the weapons."

Sarah Roeske, Woods's global-issues teacher, says that a year of watching Iraq has helped her students embrace a more detailed view of postwar Iraq. At least half her students are uncomfortable with America's role in Iraq as an occupation force, Roeske says. "But they all understand that we can't just pull out, either."

LESSON PLANS

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS

* How would you answer a teenager from another country who criticized U.S. foreign policy as too assertive?

* Has your view on the war remained constant, or changed over the last year?

TEACHING OBJECTIVES

To help students understand how the changing situation in Iraq is influencing classroom debate, specifically how the changing nature of the war is forcing some students to reconsider how they feel about it and the role of the United States in the world.

CLASSROOM STRATEGIES

BEFORE READING: How many students are following the news from Iraq? Ask students why they think the war does (or does not) affect them.

Next, write "War in Iraq" on the board. Beneath that headline, draw a long horizontal line, with a vertical line at midpoint. At the left write "Against." At the right, write "For."

CRITICAL THINKING: After students read the article, ask them to identify the point on the line where they would put themselves, from strong disapproval of the war to strong approval. Then have them identify which facts have led them to their position.

* Has the fact that no weapons of mass destruction ("doomsday weapons") have been found so far affected their views?

* How many agree with student Karen Bressan that the U.S. invasion was without provocation?

* Erin McCann, though she hopes the war will have a positive result, says she learned the importance of being skeptical of government claims. Should citizens be skeptical of their government's claims? If so, what types of circumstances should trigger their suspicions?

* Even war opponents agree that Saddam Hussein was a murderous dictator. Was eliminating him sufficient cause for war? If so, should the U.S. go to war against other cruel dictators?

ANALYSIS/WRITING: Teacher Sarah Roeske says at least half her students are uncomfortable with America's role in Iraq, "but they all understand that we can't just pull out, either." Assign students to use this and other information in the article as the basis of a letter they might write to an Iraqi student. The focus of the letter should be "What I Think About America's Role in Iraq."

WEB WATCH: www.iraq.net/ is the site of the Iraq Net Information Network, which provides news about Iraq from a variety of sources.

RELATED ARTICLE: What lies ahead?

By Thom Shanker in Washington

The American-led occupation force faces a June 30 deadline to hand over sovereignty to an Iraqi civilian government. Yet, as of mid-April, the process for a political transition in Iraq remains unclear, with no firm plans for who the leaders will be on the transfer date.

In the wake of several violent weeks in late March and April, some Pentagon policy makers and military officers are concerned that Iraq's political transformation is not keeping pace with the fight to restore security in areas that American troops first captured in the invasion a year ago.

They are worried that without a successful political transformation of Iraq into a country with a new government that has popular support, maintaining order will require repeated military intervention in the months ahead.

"We can beat these guys, and we're proving our resolve," says one military officer." But unless the political side keeps up, we'll have to do it again after July 1 and maybe in September and again next year and again and again."

Those critical assessments of the political process in Iraq differ from the Bush administration's public descriptions of steady movement toward sovereignty in Iraq. President Bush insists the transfer will take place as scheduled.

But some officials say time is running out. The real deadline, says

one Pentagon planner, is not the date for the transfer of power to Iraqis, but "the point of vanishing consent from the Iraqi people."

Thom Shanker is a correspondent in the Washington bureau of The New York Times.

Sam Dillon covers education for The New York Times.