Well I think you misinterpreted a few of my points so let me address some of your concerns.  I know I am new here but I am not new to the concept of what SOCOM and JSOC is about.  I didn’t want to make my first post any longer so let me elaborate on some things.

#1 – I know.  Nobody talks about ISA and rightfully so.  I’m not looking for operational details about them or anybody else, just asking if the pipeline for some of the less-known intel units comes from the intel side or the combat side, and if the Navy has anything comparable.

#2 – Again, I know.  You can’t go tier 1 right into the military.  Generally you go infantry or tier 3 first, and if you are good enough you might get asked to try out.  Never heard of “Brand X” though unless you are talking SAD/MSP or whatever, but they are CIA and not military.

#3 – I have no problem with infantry work and putting my time in before I try to move onto something better.  Ranger batts are bad-ass, don’t get me wrong.  The point of that statement was that if I am going to do infantry stuff first, I would rather do it in the corps than the army.  FR/MSOC isn’t tier 1 but there are options with the CIA and DIA after putting in 12 years or so with the USMC that I believe would open up.

#4 – This was relayed to me in jest by one of my ROTC friends and I think you missed what I was trying to say (or I missed what I was trying to say, it was late…).  Anyway it was something along the lines of “Think about your career.  You have college loans to pay off.  Infantry shit is cool but if you never go any farther than eight years of enlisted infantry (i.e. don’t make it through selection), it really doesn’t help you all that much with a related job outside the military down the road, unless you want to be a neighborhood commando.”

#5 – Yeah, sucks.  I saw, even with my horrible vision, that you were in a similar situation.  I have plenty of plans though, don’t worry.

#6 – Good to go here.

#7 – I’m hoping some people from the intel side can chime in here on what daily life is like because doing the administrative stuff is something that I am not too fond of.  I know it has to be done but if that’s all you do, then its not something I really am interested in.  CI work would be a blast but I believe they closed that MOS in the Army a year or so ago and all the CI people are now fed from the HUMIT MOS.  I talked to some people from the CIA when they were on-campus about getting a job but again, they are looking mostly for analysts and people with graduate degrees or military time.  For DO/NCS it’s the same from what I understand, but no one from the operations side has ever showed up to answer questions.  FBI isn’t something I’m really interested in either as I really want to go overseas, about the only other agency that I would consider working for would be the secret service.

I know there are a lot of posers and 13 years olds who want to be “d3lta ninja snipers” so I understand there is an amount of hostility in addressing the same questions over and over again.  This is something that I have had a serious interest in for 4+ years now however and is not just a passing fad for me.  I understand (for the most part) what is involved in this type of work and that its not a Chuck Norris movie.  I was just hoping someone could shed some light on what happens on the intel side of things action-wise, since it seems even the non-“special” elements of it are rarely talked about in comparison to all the SOF talk.

Anyway maybe you can understand my situation a little better now, I am trying to refrain fro dumping my whole life story on here and still convey that this is more or less something I am considering as a career and so

No worries, its understandable with the amount of people who want to be in some super-squirrel unit until they realize that it actually takes work.  You bring up some interesting points so let me see if I can hit them all.

As far as the 18x route, I think it’s a good deal and I’m glad the Army did it.  It works out well for them too, since most people wash out of the pipeline at some point and end up in line units, which is where they really need them.  I have thought pretty hard about going this way but I don’t really get all that fired up about the UW stuff.  I’m still relatively young so I am thinking more along the lines of DA missions, which is more of a Ranger task on the Army side.  Plus I heard that a lot of the SF guys end up going to Ranger school anyway, and if I ended up going to Ranger school I would rather end up in the battalions than an SF A-team.

The USMC and the Army are both seeing a lot of action right now in Iraq and Afghanistan, but I have always wanted to be a Marine.  Just a personal thing.  I know that they don’t have the equivalent of what the other branches bring to the table in terms of SOF but I am willing to deal with that if there are opportunities in the government doing tier 1 type stuff after I get out.  The teams are still a good option, although for different reasons than what I started out with, as they seem to get more DA work than the Recon guys.  My biggest issue is that if I end up getting dropped I could end up chipping paint somewhere, which is definitely not my idea of fun.  Its easy to say that I’ll make it through BUD/S and SQT no problem, but the odds are against me and it would be foolish to think otherwise.  At least in the corps you get dropped back to an MEU or wherever you came from.  However I still run up against the vision thing with both these options.

The FBI is getting their share of work now as well, however I can’t really cut it in a occupation predicated around constitutional and federal law.  I have the grades to prove it.  Plenty of people have tried to get me to do this as well, but if its not something that I am 100% fired up about I feel like I should be doing something else.  Same thing applies for all other options above as well.