This kind of ignorance has no business on the House Intelligence Committee

I expect better than this. Good lord, man! How can you be a member of the House, have held a seat on Intelligence all this time, have just been appointed chairman of that powerful and important committee, and you're still a little fuzzy on the religious doctrine that drives al Qae'da? How can this be? How can this possibly be??? I simply must know how this is possible. Until this question is answered, my mind shall remain boggled.

Of course the uproar in Washington wasn't about the fact that the incoming House Intelligence Committee Chairman couldn't answer the questions asked...noooo, not in Washington. In Washington, the derision was directed at the reporter who asked the questions.

like a number of his colleagues and top counterterrorism officials that I’ve interviewed over the past several months, Reyes can’t answer some fundamental questions about the powerful forces arrayed against us in the Middle East.
It begs the question, of course: How can the Intelligence Committee do effective oversight of U.S. spy agencies when its leaders don’t know basics about the battlefield?
To his credit, Reyes, a kindly, thoughtful man who also sits on the Armed Service Committee, does see the undertows drawing the region into chaos.

***Snip***

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. 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.

We warmed up with a long discussion about intelligence issues and Iraq. And then we veered into terrorism’s major players.

To me, it’s like asking about Catholics and Protestants in Northern Ireland: Who’s on what side?

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.

That’s because the extremist Sunnis who make up a l 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.

It’s been five years since these Muslim extremists flew hijacked airliners into the World Trade Center.

Is it too much to ask that our intelligence overseers know who they are?

Boy Howdy! I could not possibly agree more! I not only expect the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee to know these things, I expect most of my fellow citizens to know at least that much, or shut the hell up.

Congressman Reyes, you absolutely must become a regular visitor of one Juan Cole. In fact, get him on the phone, bring him to your offices and do not come out until he has educated you on these matters. Good lord man! You now represent all Americans, Mr. Reyes, and some of us are more than willing to hold every last one of you accountable.

Unlivable

According to the Iraqi Ministry of Health, 150,000 Iraqi civillians have perished due to violence in the civil war that has torn that nation asunder since the coalition backed invasion of that country in March of 2003.

That official number puts the lie to the criticisms of the Lancet study, now doesn't it? With 150,000 confirmed civillian deaths due to violence, 650,000 overall excess deaths since the invasion doesn't seem so far fetched after all. (I told you so.)


For every fatality, three are seriously injured. These are the very real effects caused by the military action undertaken by the United States in your name. Yes, Saddam was a brute. But the country was not mired in civil war and sectarian violence. The place wasn't a huge terrorist training camp that had been ethnically cleansed of the educated and secular, mostly Sunni, middle and professional classes.

The war in Iraq is a human catastrophe of tremendous proportions. There is no easy out. We have options that are bad, worse and catastrophic. We have no good ones. We also have some bitter truths to accept. Chief among these bitter truths: When we invaded Iraq, we played right into the hands of the Mullahs in Tehran. The Iran-Iraq war of the 80's ended, but it was not won. Not until the United States invaded Iraq, anyway; we toppled the one power in the region that kept the Iranian regime in check and emboldened the Shi'ite majority to start extracting revenge against the Sunni minority that had ruled the country since independence.

The Iraq war let a big angry Genie out of his bottle. It also put the largest oil reserves on the planet outside Saudi Arabia under Shia feet and Shia control.

Somebody didn't take their logic problems to their conclusions, and the unconsidereds have proven deadly...To 650,000 Iraqis and the United States Constitution.

Who still thinks it's been worth it?

And how the hell do we get out?