Nancy Pelosi's headache

House Speaker-elect Nancy Pelosi woke up Monday to a CNN report that Rep. Silvestre Reyes of Texas, the man she chose to become the new chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, "failed a quiz of basic questions about al-Qaeda and Hezbollah."

The quiz took place in an interview with Congressional Quarterly's National Security editor Jeff Stein. Rep. Reyes was asked whether al-Qaeda is Sunni or Shiite -- the two branches of Islam currently battling for control of Iraq -- and he answered incorrectly that al-Qaeda is Shiite.

CQ editor Jeff Stein pointed out that al-Qaeda was founded as a Sunni organization and believes the Shiites are heretics.

Rep. Reyes also was confused about the sectarian alignment of Hezbollah. Asked whether they are Sunni or Shiite, the incoming chairman of the Intelligence Committee hemmed, hawed, laughed, shifted in his seat, asked the reporter why he was asking such questions at five o'clock, asked if he could answer in Spanish, and then didn't answer.

Hezbollah is a Shiite group that is currently trying to topple the elected government of Lebanon. The U.S. State Department lists it as a terrorist organization.

Now, you may not know whether al-Qaeda and Hezbollah are Shiite or Sunni, but you have not been sitting on the House Intelligence Committee throughout the Global War on Terror and receiving classified briefings on the information collected by the very expensive intelligence agencies of the United States government. (If you have, welcome Congressman, to America Wants to Know.)

Speaker-elect Pelosi is in exactly the same situation as President Bush was in last February after the Dubai Ports World deal became public. (See "Roosting Comfortably.") She campaigned hard on the issue of accountability for intelligence failures. Now she faces the fact that the man she has chosen to chair the critically important Intelligence Committee, the man who will hear the briefings others are not permitted to hear, the man with the responsibility for evaluating the validity of classified information so that we do not stumble into another avoidable catastrophe, appears to be a disinterested, incurious, preoccupied bonehead.

That just won't do.

Speaker-elect Pelosi is going to have to replace Rep. Reyes as Intelligence chairman, and fast. The last thing this country needs is another learning experience.



Copyright 2006

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