Friday, December 15, 2006

Incoming Senate Intelligence Committee Chair fails basic intelligence quiz

I know it's an bit of an old story, but I still couldn't resist. Intelligence chairman fails quiz...

You really can't make this stuff up...

Washington, D.C. (AHN)-It seems ironic that the person selected by incoming House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to chair the Senate Intelligence Committee would fail to pass a basic intelligence quiz.

But that is exactly what happened when Rep. Silvestre Reyes (D-Texas)-who is slated to take the helm of the Intelligence Committee in January-attempted to take a simple quiz put together by Congressional Quarterly.

Reyes struggled when asked even simple questions about major terrorist organizations, Al Qaeda and Hezbollah.

For example, Reyes' response to a question asking which branch of Islam-Sunni or Shiite-comprised Al Qaeda was "probably both, predominantly, probably Shiite."

That answer is incorrect. In fact, Al Qaeda was founded by Osama Bin Laden and is a Sunni organization which rejects Shiites as heretics.

Reyes was also unsure who or what Hezbollah was-a major terrorist group which operates outside of Southern Lebanon.

CQ National Security Editor Jeff Stein, who posed the questions to Reyes, said he was "amazed" by Reyes lack of knowledge about the two major terrorist organizations, telling CNN, "If you're the baseball commissioner and you don't know the difference between the Yankees and the Red Sox, you don't know baseball. You're not going to have the respect of the people you work with."


What else can you say about that? It's simply unbeleivable.

Hopefully America files that in the back of their minds and corrects this sort of mistake in 2008 (see also Chuckie Rangel calls for reinstatement of draft).

I bet if the follow up question to that was "Hezbollah attacked Israel recently. Who's fault is that?" he would have answered Bush. Nevermind that he doesn't even know who Hezbollah is...

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