New Chair of House Intel Cmte Lacks Basic Understanding of Terror Groups

Here's a scary report... In an interview with national security editor for Congressional Quarterly, Texas Congressman Silvestre Reyes, the incoming Democratic chairman for the House Intelligence Committee, was unable to answer "fundamental questions" related to the Middle East, including which sects terror groups adhere to.

"Reyes stumbled when I asked him a simple question about al-Qaeda at the end of a 40-minute interview in his office last week," Stein writes for CQ. "Members of the Intelligence Committee, mind you, are paid $165,200 a year to know more than basic facts about our foes in the Middle East."

"The dialogue went like this:

Al-Qaeda is what, I asked, Sunni or Shia?
"Al-Qaeda, they have both," Reyes said. "You’re talking about predominately?"
"Sure," I said, not knowing what else to say.
"Predominantly - probably Shiite," he ventured.
He couldn’t have been more wrong.
Al-Qaeda is profoundly Sunni.
If a Shiite showed up at an Al-Qaeda club house, they’d slice off his head and use it for a soccer ball."

Sunnis who make up al-Qaeda consider all Shiites to be heretics. Al-Qaeda’s Sunni roots account for its very existence. Osama bin Laden and his followers believe the Saudi Royal family besmirched the true faith through their corruption and alliance with the United States, particularly allowing U.S. troops on Saudi soil.

And Hezbollah? I asked him. What are they?

"Hezbollah. Uh, Hezbollah..."
He laughed again, shifting in his seat.
"Why do you ask me these questions at five o’clock? Can I answer in Spanish? Do you speak Spanish?"
"Poquito," I said, a little.
"Poquito?!" He laughed again.
"Go ahead," I said, talk to me about Sunnis and Shia in Spanish.
Reyes: "Well, I, uh...."

I apologized for putting him "on the spot a little." But I reminded him that the people who have killed thousands of Americans on U.S. soil and in the Middle East have been front page news for a long time now. It's been 23 years since a Hezbollah suicide bomber killed over 200 U.S. military personnel in Beirut, mostly Marines. Then of course, there was that was this summer with Israel that was the top story of the day every day for a month.

Comments

[Blinkered Thinker]

I absolutely agree that Congressman Reyes should've known by now the Sunni--Shia difference, particularly since he will chair the Intel Committee. The difficulty is that those who see everything in politics through the prisms of race, ethnicity, and gender will accuse Mr. Reyes' questioner of implicit bigotry; i.e., he would never ask the same questions of a white congressman.

George Will many years ago on This Week w/ Brinkley asked Jesse Jackson, an announced candidate for president, a straightforward question about the G-7. Jackson was clueless, stammering to Will: "Explain yourself." Will was excoriated in the press for trying to 'show up' a minority presidential candidate.