Thanks for that, Brilliant!

WASHINGTON, DC—A recently released Pentagon report is raising new worries that Iran has been operating several large facilities designed solely for the purpose of enriching mass quantities of high-grade students.

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1. Low-grade students bond and expend energy outside core curriculum

2. Facility-contamination expert’s office, stocked with bucket, trash bags, mop

3. Cache of classified 2-page reports

4. Buses transporting loads of bright, glowing new students to facility

“We have reason to believe that specially trained Iranian science teachers are taking raw, unrefined brain power and bombarding it with knowledge at accelerated levels,” said U.S. Undersecretary Of Defense For Intelligence Stephen Cambone at a Tuesday press conference. “If current levels of student concentration remain this high, Iran could be a mere five to eight years away from developing an atomic scientist.”

Leading analysts believe that the teachers are using a widely applied enrichment process in which students are isolated from such elements as family, play, and cartoons, and are rotated through seven separative work units over the course of each day. This cycle is repeated for months, until the students are made highly reactive to reading matter, which enables them to absorb large amounts of information in short periods of time.

The students are then continually exposed to heavy material, taught to achieve critical thought, and finally graduate to a state of explosive productivity.

Hard evidence that would support the Pentagon’s findings includes a top-secret syllabus, acquired by the CIA, which indicates that Iran may begin testing their students, possibly without warning, as early as next Friday. Reconnaissance-satellite images also reveal the presence of two Tehran–area facilities identified by intelligence sources only as “P.S. 235″ and “H.S. 238.”

Despite the Pentagon’s announcement in mid-June that Iran had halted its nuclear-science program, additional satellite photos taken in early September clearly show 40-foot-long buses transporting multiple loads of students to these facilities in the morning hours between 7 and 8 a.m. Some images also reveal a short, 20-foot-long bus thought to contain a smaller number of highly volatile, non-reactive, and extremely dense students.

“While we believe that a majority of these students were developed within Iran’s borders anywhere from 13 to 17 years ago, there is also evidence that they are importing older students from former Soviet republics and Pakistan in what officials have dubbed an ‘exchange program,’” CIA Director Michael Hayden said.

Although no one is sure exactly what is being conducted inside the accelerated core curriculum, a team of UNESCO inspectors who visited suspected Iranian enrichment facilities in 2004 found a number of microscopes, Bunsen burners, centrifuges, and reference materials, including a stockpile of instructional materials and textbooks covered in brown paper wrapping intended to obscure the material’s subject matter.

In a nationally televised Oval Office address Tuesday, President Bush expressed the concern that if Iran is allowed to enrich its students unchecked, many of them could end up anywhere, with some potentially landing in major university centers in New York and Los Angeles.

“The U.S. stopped enriching its students decades ago, and we call upon Iran to do the same,” Bush said. “If the Iranians do not put an end to this program by the middle of December, and impose final examinations, they could face further isolation from the international community.”

As the U.S. awaits a response to the ultimatum, American intelligence continues to monitor a rumored late-afternoon summit, consisting of a series of secretive bilateral meetings between parents and a female science expert known as Mrs. Bakhtiari.

http://www.theonion.com/content/node/53276

Although I don’t agree with the conspiratorial tone of the piece, I think it highlights many problems with Shulsky’s and Schmitt’s ideas. I will say that I do agree with some of their specific recommendations, but am strongly against their overall philisophy regarding intelligence and its role in policy.

I also agree with what Paul said. The article puts forth many unfounded, in my view, criticisms of social science methodologies, but offers no solutions of its own besides trite suggestions like more language and cultural expertise. Mirror-imaging and other cognitive biases are human foibles well known by the intelligence community that all human beings are susceptible to. Sound social science methods used by good analysts will limit this human bias, though it is impossible to eliminate. The Strauss article offers no solution to account for cognitive biases – in fact the methods suggested seem to reinforce them.

The article’s plea for listening to one’s enemies is, I think, at odds with its emphasis on the deceptive nature of one’s enemies. It is obvious that one should beware of mirror-imaging and the assumption of universal decision-making styles, but I don’t see what the piece is offering as a credible alternative methodology. It seems to me that the implied alternative is a combination of deductive reasoning and intuition by those blessed with the ability to divine the true intentions of our enemies.

For example, it seems that intelligence analysis based on the implied alternative could look like the following: deceptive regimes disguise their intentions, so one must assume that those intentions are nefarious. The deceptive nature of these regimes will render it impossible to find evidence that they do not possess worrisome capabilities or intentions.

Anyway, take at look at these guys’ performance to decide if anyone should take them seriously.

What did you find to be “Ick” about the document?

9/20/2006 – WASHINGTON (AFPN)—The hot dog stand in the Pentagon’s center courtyard, which long has been a source of Cold War intrigue, will be torn down in the coming months and replaced with a new eating facility.

“Rumor has it that during the Cold War the Russians never had any less than two missiles aimed at this hot dog stand,” said Brett Eaton, an information and communications officer for Washington Headquarters Services. “They thought this was the Pentagon’s most top secret meeting room, and the entire Pentagon was a large fortress built around this hot dog stand.”

Reportedly, by using satellite imagery, the Soviets could see groups of U.S. military officers entering and exiting the hot dog stand at about the same time every day. They concluded that the stand was the entrance to an underground bunker.

True to a point, but this is hardly unique to the United States or even the West.