From Today's Washington Post Article on the Militarized Corporatocracy

Here's my favorite part: "Contract analysts are often straight out of college and trained at corporate headquarters. When hired, a typical analyst knows very little about the priority countries — Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan — and is not fluent in their languages. Still, the number of intelligence reports they produce on these key countries is overwhelming, say current and former intelligence officials who try to cull them everyday."

These are the bricks that compose our socially constructed "knowledge" of al-Qaeda etc. Volumes are written by people who have no real understanding of the worlds they are writing about. But when you are composing fiction, liberties may be taken. At least novelists have to put their stuff out for public scrutiny--but not these authors; they are anonymous and the public is prohibited from scrutinizing their work (national security, my friends). We can't "protect" our democracy if the people really know what's going on...