Saturday, December 09, 2006

Uh, no...

"Uh, no. AQ is overwhelmingly Sunni, actually more Wahhabi Sunni than anything else. Osama bin Laden and his cohorts don't cotton to Shi'ites; they consider them heretics, as Stein points out. Nor was Reyes' ignorance limited to the composition of al-Qaeda. When Stein asked him about Hezbollah -- which hasn't exactly flown under the radar this year -- he couldn't identify the Iranian proxy terrorists as predominantly Shi'ite.

Has Reyes actually attended intel committee hearings over the last few years? Has he read newspapers? People talk about George Bush being out of touch, but this should send genuine fear into the American electorate. How, Stein asks, can Reyes exercise effective oversight on American intelligence when he has so little understanding of our enemies and of the chief battlegrounds in the war on terror?

The Democrats should seriously reconsider Harman's expulsion. With the nation at war, we need people of expertise in these positions. It has become obvious that Pelosi instead considers these assignments only for their patronage value."