If this is the quality of CIA profiling we have now, this war will never

[Skidmore]

end an done in Iran is sure to begin.

Blitzer just had a CIA profiler on and ask him to profile Ahmedinejad. The guy spent considerable time on the fact that Ahmedinejad showed up at the UN sans tie and saw that as a statement that he is his own man and assertiveness of some sort. I found that interpretation stunningly ignorant. In post-revolutionary Iran, no man wears a tie. Ties were seen as symbols of Westernization and were called "domb-e-khaer, which literally means an "ass' tail." If the profiler would have paid attention, NONE of the Iranian delegation wore ties.

[shain from kane]

1. Wearing a cowboy hat doesn't make you a cowboy. n/t

[acmejack]

2. Since they purged the place of those with the wrong ideology

And the mass resignations what can you expect? The quality has to be affected.

[Kutjara]

3. One of the potential weaknesses of profiling...

...is bias on the part of the profiler. While the technique works reasonably well for identifying certain outlying personality types within one's own culture (serial killers, sex offenders, etc.), it is totally useless for identifying similar traits in people from foreign cultures unless the profiler has extensive knowledge of that culture.

To use an absurd example, a profiler from Wisconsin attempting to spot a dangerous criminal in Kenya may pick out a Masai warrior, because his 'weird' clothes and evidence of 'self-mutilation' means he's clearly crazy.