If the Iraq War disaster has an upside, it’s this: the conflict should permanently discredit many awful policies and practices, allowing the nation to declare them off-limits for the future. Preventive war. Politicized intelligence. Coalitions of the coerced. New frontiers of media manipulation.

That’s what Lessons From Iraq: Avoiding the Next War is about. This remarkable new book, co-edited by IPS research fellow Miriam Pemberton, who is also the Foreign Policy In Focus peace and security editor, and William Hartung, Director of the Arms and Security Initiative at the New America Foundation, is now available online and at bookstores. Please read the introduction, by Miriam Pemberton, on our site.

Pemberton and Hartung drew up a list of what lessons the United States should learn from the Iraq War and asked the experts on each to boil down what they know for the rest of us. The authors include Ivan Eland, The Three Trillion Dollar War co-authors Joseph Stiglitz and Linda Bilmes; pre-war UN weapons inspector Hans Blix, and Pultizer Prize 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."