Great Series on Iraq at CAP Posted by Shawn Brimley

The Center for American Progress will hold a series of events on Iraq in the coming weeks.  Looks like a great effort.

Series: The Impact of Five Years in Iraq

The Center for American Progress will host a series of events and produce several analyses in the coming weeks examining the course of the war in Iraq and proposing the next steps for U.S. policy in Iraq. The series will include speeches by prominent policymakers and panel discussions on important aspects of Iraq policy and its effects on U.S. national security. The Center will also release updated analyses examining the current policy in Iraq and providing an alternative direction.

In addition, each day between the fifth anniversary of the start of the military campaign in Iraq on March 19 to President Bush's "Mission Accomplished" speech on May 1, the Center's website will highlight a key piece of analysis examining the mistakes made by the Bush administration and its allies in waging the war of choice in Iraq—and the consequences of those mistakes on our overall national security. These analyses will be catalogued on the War in Iraq page of our website, providing a detailed source of information on our nation's costly march to war in the wrong place at the wrong time five years ago.

See below the fold for the event schedule.

Event schedule follows - additional speakers will be added

March 13
Remarks: "A Conversation on Iraq" with Senator Jack Reed (D-RI)
Sen. Jack Reed, a former Army paratrooper, has made 11 trips to Iraq, the most of any senator. At the Center for American Progress, Sen. Reed will discuss his most recent trip to Iraq which took place January 17-18, 2008. Sen. Reed traveled across Iraq with Special Operations forces and visited the cities of Fallujah, Balad, Baqubah, Basra, and Baghdad, where he met with Generals Petraeus and Odierno as well as Ambassador Crocker.

March 13
Book discussion: No End in Sight: Iraq's Descent into Chaos, featuring Charles Ferguson
Called "a clear, temperate, and devastating account of high-level arrogance and incompetence" by The New York Times, No End in Sight is the first book to chronicle the reasons behind Iraq's descent into guerilla war, warlord rule, criminality, and anarchy. Based on Charles Ferguson's Academy Award nominated documentary film.

March 20
Panel Discussion: Debating the Surge in Iraq
Andrew Bacevich (Boston University), Michele Flournoy (Center for New American Security), and Major General Robert Scales (U.S. Army, ret.)
On the 5th anniversary of the Iraq invasion, the Center for American Progress will host a panel discussion to assess the impact of the surge of over 30,000 American troops which took place in 2007. Panelists will analyze the impact of the surge on the security situation in Iraq, its effect on Iraq's political process and where the United States should go from here. With the drawdown of the surge forces already underway, panelists will also analyze the effect of the surge on U.S. military readiness and overall U.S. security interests in the Middle East.

March 27
Panel Discussion: Financial Costs of the War in Iraq
Linda Bilmes (Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government) and Steve Kosiak (Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments)
In 2002, before the war in Iraq began, White House economic adviser Lawrence Lindsey offered an "upper bound" estimate of the cost of the war in Iraq to be $100 to $200 billion. Nearly 4,000 American and between 100,000 and 600,000 Iraqi lives later, the direct cost of the Iraq war is approaching $1 trillion and the total cost may well exceed $3 trillion. Panelists will discuss the both the direct and indirect costs of the war in Iraq. At a time when the American economy is near recession, panelists will also discuss the impact of the war's record financial cost on the American economy.

March 31
Center for American Progress Paper Release: How Does this End?
Tactical Progress, Strategic Failure in Iraq
In 2003, as a well-organized indigenous insurgency began to form in weeks following the U.S. invasion of Iraq, General Petraeus famously asked a Washington Post reporter : "Tell me how does this end?" Five years, 4,000 American lives, nearly $1 trillion, and tens of thousand Iraqi lives later, it is still the ce