Francis J. "Bing" West is an author and former Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs during the Reagan Administration. His book The Strongest Tribe is a history of the Iraq War that was a New York Times Bestseller and was ranked by Foreign Affairs Magazine as #7 among the top foreign policy books of 2009. His 2004 book The March Up: Taking Baghdad with the First Marine Division, written with United States Marine Corps General Ray L. Smith, was awarded the Marine Corps Heritage Prize for non-fiction, as well as the Colby Award.

Neta Crawford is Professor of Political Science and African American Studies at Boston University where her teaching focuses on international ethics and normative change. Crawford is currently on the board of the Academic Council of the United Nations System. She is the author of Argument and Change in World Politics: Ethics, Decolonization, Humanitarian Intervention, which was a co-winner of the 2003 American Political Science Association Jervis and Schroeder Award for best book in International History and Politics.

Roger Stahl is an associate professor in the Department of Communication Studies at the University of Georgia, with interests in rhetoric, media, and culture. His 2010 book Militainment, Inc.: War, Media, and Popular Culture (as well as his 2007 documentary by the same name) traces this relationship in recent years.

Bibliography:

• Unwarranted Influence; Dwight D. Eisenhower and the Military Industrial Complex by James Ledbetter, Yale University Press 2011
• Militainment, Inc; War, Media, and Popular Culture by Roger Stahl; Routledge 2010
• Prophets of War; Lockheed Martin and the Making of the Military Industrial Complex by William D. Hartung; Nation Books 2011
• Virtuous War; Mapping the Military-Industrial-Media-Entertainment Network by James Der Derian; Routledge Press 2009
• Rebuilding America's Defenses: Strategy, Forces and Resources For a New Century. 
A Report of the Project for the New American Century, 
September 2000
• Present Dangers: Crisis and Opportunity in American Foreign and Defense Policy
edited by Robert Kagan and William Kristol, 
Encounter Books, 2000
• The Complex; How the Military Invades our Everyday Lives by Nick Turse; Metropolitan Books 2008

Read the interview with Roger Stahl, an associate professor of communications at the University of Georgia and author of Militainment Inc.: War, Media, and Popular Culture, On the rise of militainment. Action Speaks! By DAVID SCHARFENBERG, The Providence Phoenix, September 28, 2011