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[OM] Re: First CF card failure

Subject: [OM] Re: First CF card failure
From: Bob Whitmire <bwhitmire@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Tue, 30 Oct 2007 16:23:26 -0400
Hum. Interesting. I have a personal angle on this. Many, many years  
ago I was a military intelligence operative working a Middle East  
mission. The duty station was in the highlands of northern Ethiopia,  
now the new nation of Eritrea. Some of the lads and I, mostly out of  
boredom, began digging a little more deeply than we actually were  
supposed to in little piles of combined intelligence material that  
were available. (None of this is breaking confidence now that James  
Bamford has written all his books on codebreakers and NSA, etc.)

Sometimes these little analysis sessions took place over some good  
Ethiopian, ah, weed, which, of course, broadened our horizons and  
allowed us to _really_ think outside the box <g>. (At one point I  
even got in trouble with my NCOIC for spending too much time on  
research, and not enough time snatching communications out of the  
air.) Eventually, our little band of pseudo-hippies in uniform (none  
higher in rank than E-5) reached the conclusion that World War III,  
when it came, would not be fought as NATO vs. Warsaw Pact, but rather  
would be militant Islam against the West.

Just for fun, we began trying to sell our hypothesis to various NCOs  
and officers charged with actually investigating stuff like this.  
Does it surprise anyone that our efforts amounted to crashing a  
motorcycle against a stone wall at 65 mph? In hindsight, the  
brilliance of our analysis and insight was just effing breathtaking,  
which is to say, I think we were right. <g> But no one would listen.  
No one even _pretended_ to listen. the NATO/Warsaw scenario was writ  
large and carved deep, and there was no displacing it.

And if there are enough key words in this to bring it to NSA's  
attention: Listen up, Ft. Mead: WE EFFING TOLD YOU SO! THIRTY SEVEN  
EFFING YEARS AGO!

Sorry for the OT rant.

--Bob



On Oct 30, 2007, at 5:43 AM, Andrew Fildes wrote:

> Taleb claims that we are simply incapable of predicting anything more
> than minor changes and problems that fit with our view of the
> scenario. Anything outside the box is just not conceived of.


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