Frederick W. Kagan is a resident scholar in defense and security policy studies at American Enterprise Institute (AEI). He was previously an associate professor of military history at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. Kagan is the author of Iraq: The Way Ahead and Choosing Victory: A Plan for Success in Iraq, reports by the Iraq Planning Group at AEI, as well as Finding the Target: The Transformation of American Military Policy (2006). He is a contributing editor at the Weekly Standard.

General Jack Keane is senior managing director and co-founder of Keane Advisors, LLC, a private equity firm. He is also a member of the secretary of defense’s policy board, a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, and a director and member of numerous non-profit organizations. General Keane, a retired four-star general, completed 37 years in public service in December 2003, culminating as acting chief of staff and vice chief of staff of the U.S. Army.

Charles Ferguson is the writer/director of No End in Sight, a documentary about U.S. policy in Iraq. He received his PhD in Political Science from M.I.T. After selling Vermeer Technologies of which he was co-founder, Ferguson has been a visiting scholar at M.I.T. and U.C. Berkeley, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, and wrote three books on information technology. A member of the Council on Foreign Relations, a director of the French-American Foundation, and CEO of Representational Pictures, he resides in Berkeley, California.

Sir Malcolm Rifkind is a former foreign secretary and a former defense secretary of the United Kingdom. He was one of only four ministers to serve throughout the whole prime ministerships of both Margaret Thatcher and John Major. In 1997 he was knighted in recognition of his public service. He is the member of Parliament for the London constituency of Kensington and Chelsea.