Whoa Redux

Looking for work, one does occasionally see "opportunities" that are bizarre, or intriguingly wrong, or just...odd. Like this morning, when Monster sent me a "saved opportunity":

Army Linguist, Human Intelligence Collector (35M)

Job Description:
Having access to the correct information is absolutely necessary to plan for our national defense. Intelligence specialists, such as the Human Intelligence Collector(HUMINT), are integral to providing Army personnel with information about enemy forces and potential battle areas. Intelligence specialists use aerial photographs, electronic monitoring and human observation in order to gather and study information that's required to design defense plans and tactics. The Human Intelligence Collector is primarily responsible for supervising and conducting information collection operations.

Requirements:
Helpful skills include:
An interest in reading maps and charts
- An interest in gathering information and studying its meaning
- An ability to organize information
- An ability to think and write clearly
- Fluency in any of the following languages:
- Arabic
- Korean
- Persian-Afghan (Dari)
- Persian-Iranian (Farsi)
- Pushtu/Pashto/Pachto
- Pushtu-Afghan
- Spanish
- Chinese-Mandarin
- Indonesian
- Russian
- Serbo-Croatian
- Tagalog


Training:
Job training for a Human Intelligence Collector consists of nine weeks of Basic Training, where you'll learn basic Soldiering skills, and seventeen weeks of Advanced Individual Training (AIT), including practice in intelligence gathering. Part of this time is spent in the classroom and part in the field. Some of the skills you'll learn are:
- Screenings, Debriefings, and Interrogations
- Preparing maps and charts
- Conducting HUMINT analysis
- Preparing intelligence reports
- Using computer systems
Duties may include:
- Assisting in the screening of HUMINT sources and documents
- Conducting debriefings and interrogations of HUMINT sources in English and foreign languages
- Translating written foreign material and captured documents into English
- Preparing and editing appropriate intelligence and administrative reports
- Utilizing CI/HUMINT reporting and communications equipment

Advanced Duties
As an advanced level Human Intelligence Collector, you may also be involved in:
- Reviewing and editing translations of foreign documents and materials for accuracy and completeness
- Performing difficult interrogations and translations
- Screening, assessing and debriefing (in foreign languages) refugees and defectors
- Debriefing U.S. prisoner-of-war returnees and other friendly sources to obtain information for military intelligence
- Conducting liaison in foreign language with host nation agencies
- Interpreting foreign languages into English

Okay: WTF? This is how they get interrogators? Must be willing to waterboard for the greater good (as defined by your superiors). My dropped-jaw clearly shows that I am not the right person for this opportunity.

ETA: Quite right: my line about waterboarding was a cheap shot, and I do know better. Good interrogators shake their heads in dismay at the use of torture to extract information (I know I would say anything to stop someone stepping on my toe--none of it reliable or useful data). I think I was mostly astonished to find this in my inbox (aside from the fact that I have none of the linquistic qualifications, I wouldn't last 30 seconds in Basic Training); it had also never occurred to me to consider a recruitment posting as an employment opportunity. Me such a child of the sixties.

Woe

For three days I have been cooking down my turkey stock into poultry glaze: rich, dark, syrupy and concentrated.

This morning I got caught up in something else. It boiled past the point of glaze into scorched glue. I weep.