December 9, 2006
BELTWAY BLISS:
Democrats’ New Intelligence Chairman Needs a Crash Course on al Qaeda (Jeff Stein, 12/08/06, CQ)
Forty years ago, Sgt. Silvestre Reyes was a helicopter crew chief flying dangerous combat missions in South Vietnam from the top of a soaring rocky outcrop near the sea called Marble Mountain.After the war, it turned out that the communist Viet Cong had tunneled into the hill and built a combat hospital right beneath the skids of Reyes’ UH-1 Huey gunship.
Now the five-term Texas Democrat, 62, is facing similar unpleasant surprises about the enemy, this time as the incoming chairman of the House Intelligence Committee.
That’s because, 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.
So he definitely won't understand this, Al-Zarqawi said Shiites most dangerous (OMAR SINAN, 12/09/06, Associated Press)
The slain terror leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi purportedly believed that Iraq's Shiite Muslims were more dangerous than U.S. forces and more evil than dictator Saddam Hussein, according to a posthumous interview published Friday on the Internet.,/blockquote> Posted by Orrin Judd at December 9, 2006 4:00 PM
Like I said: we wouldn't be in all this unpleasantness if them Shia terrorists hadn't attacked us on 9/11.
Posted by: ghostcat at December 9, 2006 5:04 PMSounds like Pelosi's Revenge: "You don't want Hastings, well, I make you regret it, because I've got worse in this caucus!"
Posted by: Raoul Ortega at December 9, 2006 5:07 PMSounds like Pelosi's Revenge: "You don't want Alcee Hastings, eh? Well, I'll make you regret it, because I've got worse in this caucus!"
Posted by: Raoul Ortega at December 9, 2006 5:08 PMBut can he spell Musharraf?
Posted by: ratbert at December 9, 2006 9:50 PMRaoul: For this position, I'd choose ignorant over corrupt, assuming those were my only two choices. Either way, Pelosi's not off to a good start.
Posted by: PapayaSF at December 10, 2006 12:55 AMExcept those weren't her choices. But Pelosi's pettiness prevented the naming of Jane Harmon (about whom I know little, other than see seemed to be conscientious about her job on the committee and clean for a Dem.)
And I see William "Louisiana's first African-American Congressman since Reconstruction" Jefferson won reelection, too. And I see when the Dems heard about Foley's email, they shopped them around everywhere, found no takers, and then finally went to the proper Congressional oversight authorities.
Posted by: Raoul Ortega at December 10, 2006 1:52 PM