International intelligence agencies have a competition. A patch of forest contains one sheep, which must be found. Shortest time wins.
The CIA sends a thousand men, divides up the area with a grid and sends in the agents. Each agent examines his grid square, one agent radios in the sheep's location, the sheep is captured. Time: five minutes.
MI5 doesn't really have that kind of manpower, but they deploy an array of wizard tech toys and manage to differentiate the sheep's IR signature out from all the other forest critters. Time: four minutes.
The Mossad, well, they've been kind of busy and don't really have a lot of spare personnel to send to these sorts of things, but they can spare three or four guys for the sake of showing the flag. After a huddle, two guys stalk off into the forest, and in two minutes stalk back with...a duck. The judges explain to them that the contest involves the retrieval of a sheep. Mossad dude looks at the duck and says, 'Tell 'em.' Wild-eyed with terror, the duck says, 'I'm a sheep! I'm a sheep!'
(RIMSHOT).
shoutingboy claims to have heard this one from an actual Mossad dude, but, as a member of his cabinet is reputed to have said about Thomas Jefferson, 'he tells large stories.'
which reminds me of a joke.
Date: 2003-04-16 08:23 am (UTC)International intelligence agencies have a competition. A patch of forest contains one sheep, which must be found. Shortest time wins.
The CIA sends a thousand men, divides up the area with a grid and sends in the agents. Each agent examines his grid square, one agent radios in the sheep's location, the sheep is captured. Time: five minutes.
MI5 doesn't really have that kind of manpower, but they deploy an array of wizard tech toys and manage to differentiate the sheep's IR signature out from all the other forest critters. Time: four minutes.
The Mossad, well, they've been kind of busy and don't really have a lot of spare personnel to send to these sorts of things, but they can spare three or four guys for the sake of showing the flag. After a huddle, two guys stalk off into the forest, and in two minutes stalk back with...a duck. The judges explain to them that the contest involves the retrieval of a sheep. Mossad dude looks at the duck and says, 'Tell 'em.' Wild-eyed with terror, the duck says, 'I'm a sheep! I'm a sheep!'
(RIMSHOT).