Ex-Bush officials to teach course on decision-making in Iraq invasion

Two key players and advocates of the US war on Iraq will teach a course on decision-making during the invasion of the country under former president George W. Bush, a report says.

Paul Wolfowitz and Scooter Libby, who played important roles during the war, will teach a week-long course, titled "The War in Iraq: A Study in Decision-Making," The Hill reports.

The course will explore some "key strategic decisions" made during the invasion, according to a description by the Hertog Foundation in Washington DC.

Wolfowitz served as deputy defense secretary between 2001 and 2005 and Libby served as national security adviser to then vice president Dick Cheney and Bush during that time.

"History takes on a different aspect when viewed not from years removed and with the consequences of decisions taken known, but from the viewpoints of the actual policymakers as decisions approached and as unexpected events, rivalries, counter-moves, mistakes, and imperfect understandings intervened," a course description reads.

The decision to invade Iraq was one of the most controversial decisions by Bush, which was made under the pretext of removing Saddam Hussein, who Washington claimed possessed weapons of mass destruction. 

In October 2004, however, a CIA report revealed that Saddam did not have any active WMD program at the time of the invasion.

Coalition troops overthrew the Saddam regime, but the war resulted in a more catastrophic situation and the country became the target of extremist groups including al-Qaeda and later ISIL.

About one million people were killed in Iraq during the course of the US-led invasion and occupation of the country from 2003 until 2011.

The war has cost American taxpayers $1.7 trillion, with an additional $490 billion in benefits owed to war veterans. The expenses could grow to more than $6 trillion over the next forty years counting interest, according to a study called Costs of War Project by the Watson Institute for International Studies at Brown University.

Senior members of the Bush administration are being sued by an international team of lawyers, led by former attorney general Ramsey Clark, over the war in Iraq.

The lawsuit was filed on May 27 on behalf of a single Iraqi mother, Sundus Saleh, against Bush, Cheney, former secretary of defense Donald Rumsfeld, national security adviser Condoleezza Rice, secretary of state Colin Powell, and Wolfowitz.

AT/HRJ

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