The Iraq War may have an upside, of sorts.  It should allow us to take quite a few discredited policies permanently off our table of options. Preventive war.  Politicized intelligence. Coalitions of the coerced.  New frontiers of media manipulation. To name a few.

In a new book, Lessons From Iraq: Avoiding the Next War, Institute for Policy Studies Research Fellow Miriam Pemberton and New America Foundation Fellow William D. Hartung have asked the experts to boil the lessons of the war down for the rest of us.  The authors include The Three Trillion Dollar War co-authors Joseph Stiglitz and Linda Bilmes, Aziz Huq, Jeffrey Laurenti, pre-war UN weapons inspector Hans Blix, and National Book Award winner Frances Fitzgerald.

As Barbara Ehrenreich put it: "Read this compelling set of essays and join the movement to prevent the next war."

Hartung, Fitzgerald, Huq, and Laurenti will lead the discussion of these lessons, and how to make sure they are permanently learned.

A reception will follow the discussion.