Mark Danner, professor of journalism at UC Berkeley, was a longtime staff writer for The New Yorker, specializing in foreign affairs. Danner spoke out extensively about the Iraq War, debating war supporters including Christopher Hitchens, David Frum & William Kristol. He authored the 2006 book “The Secret Way to War: the Downing Street Memo and the Iraq War's Buried History,” and “Torture and Truth: America, Abu Ghraib and the War on Terror,” which won the 2004 Madeline Dane Ross Prize. He also won three Overseas Press Awards, the National Magazine Award, an Emmy and a 1999 MacArthur Fellowship.

Greg Mitchell is the editor of Editor & Publisher, and an award-winning columnist at the E&P web site. His new book, his ninth, is "So Wrong for So Long: How the Press, the Pundits—and the President—Failed on Iraq." Previous books explored infamous political campaigns (Nixon-Douglas in 1950 and Upton Sinclair's race for governor of California in 1934), and he co-authored two books with Robert Jay Lifton on the atomic bombings of Japan and on capital punishment. His articles have appeared in dozens of leading magazines and newspapers and he blogs regularly at DailyKos and other sites.

Ari Melber is the Net movement correspondent for The Nation and a writer for magazine's campaign blog. He is a columnist for The Politico and a contributing editor at the Personal Democracy Forum, which covers technology's impact on democracy. Melber served on the John Kerry Presidential Campaign and as a Legislative Aide in the U.S. Senate. He spoke at the first YearlyKos and served on the Advisory Committee to the YearlyKos Leadership Forum in 2007. As a commentator on public affairs, he has appeared on CNBC, CNN, CNN Headline News, C-SPAN, FOX and MSNBC. (Email: amelber@hotmail.com)

Joan McCarter is a contributing editor at Daily Kos, writing as "mcjoan." She has focused on Iraq, civil liberties issues including warrantless wiretapping and torture at the blog. During the 2006 and 2008 election cycles, McCarter focused her writing on Democratic prospects in the West. McCarter worked on Capitol Hill for then Congressman and now Senator Ron Wyden. She has a master's degree in international studies from the University of Washington and worked as a writer, editor, and instructional designer at the UW from 1995-2006 before becoming a full-time blogger and fellow at Daily Kos.

Samantha Power is the Anna Lindh Professor of Practice of Global Leadership and Public Policy, based at the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy, where she was the founding executive director [1998-2002]. She is the recent author of Chasing the Flame: Sergio Vieira de Mello and the Fight to Save the World (Penguin Press, 2008), a biography of the UN envoy killed by a suicide bomber in Iraq in 2003. Her book "A Problem from Hell": America and the Age of Genocide (New Republic Books) was awarded the 2003 Pulitzer Prize for general nonfiction.