I was under the age of thirty.

What does that have to do with the price of tea in China?

It means that while I was functioning pretty good in some of my interests, history and military, and also analysis, this was by the standards of a child. It took me a bit longer to internalize more of the aspects of being competent at those sorts of thinking where the standards of an adult are concerned.

So I knew some of the older thinking, and I could apply it, but without a lot of understanding.

So, as a young hobby level 'intel analyst', my conclusion was 'expect a follow up strike'.

One of the big repeated mistakes in intelligence analysis is 'mirroring', which includes projecting that the opposition knows exactly the same things that you know.

I 'knew' how Americans would respond to such violence, so I 'knew' that people could not be stupid enough to start something like this, without an in progress plan to finish the job before we could respond effectively.

In hindsight, I apparently had a difficult time grasping that level of symbol magic thinking. Or I was poorly prepared.

I think it was probably poor preparation, because I think I grasped it fine after the fact.

Anyway, I do get irritated about some of the symbol magic thinkers, who also have decided to make some very expensive problems, that have costs I need to do something about.

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