Dumb and Dumber Congress Critters

Kurt Nimmo
Dec. 15, 2006

Down in Texas, they grow them stupid. Not that all Texans are stupid, mind you, just Democrats elected to represent the people.

For instance, when Congressional Quarterly national security editor Jeff Stein interviewed in-coming chairman of the Intelligence Committee, El Paso’s Silvestre Reyes, he asked whether al-CIA-duh, er “al Qaeda,” is a Sunni or Shi’ite organization, the good Representative was flummoxed.

“Predominantly—probably Shi’ite,” stumbled the clueless Congress critter.

Doh!

“Reyes, who takes the helm of the committee in January and has served on the panel since 2001, didn’t know that al-Qaida was a Sunni organization, and couldn’t pin down Hezbollah’s Shiite affiliations,” explains the Houston Chronicle, even though he visited both Iraq and Lebanon, apparently in a vacuum-sealed bubble. “Some experts suggested that Reyes is just one example of a U.S. policy establishment that has paid little attention to the tricky nuances of politics, religion and sectarian differences that have riven the Middle East.”

Of course, as AIPAC and the neocons run foreign policy in respect to the Middle East, it really is not necessary for Mr. Reyes to be up to speed on terrorism or, I imagine, the shape and contour of Cheney’s one hundred year or longer war.

But it is simply not House pets from El Paso who are woefully ignorant.

“There’s been a rash of stories in recent days about the shocking ignorance of various government officials when it comes to bread ‘n butter facts about the war on terror. First there was a report by Lisa Myers of NBC revealing how little some top FBI officials knew about various terrorist groups and leaders,” writes Mark Finkelstein on the NewsBusters site.

You’d think the former Assistant Director for the Counterterrorism Division of the FBI, Dale Watson, who headed up the FBI investigation into the September 11, 2001 attacks, would know something about “al-Qaeda.” But no. In fact, such stunning ignorance, as usual, is rewarded—Watson now has himself a comfy position over at Booz Allen Hamilton, the technology corporation that finagled various contracts with NORAD and NORTHCOM. It should be noted that Dale will be working for the neocon James “World War Four” Woolsey over at Booz. Obviously, stupidity has its rewards.

In a deposition taken on Dec. 8, 2004, a lawyer for Bassem Youssef, the FBI’s highest-ranking Arab-American agent, who sued his former employer for discrimination, asked Watson: â€œDo you know who Osama bin Laden’s spiritual leader was?”

Lisa Myers and Jim Popkin, writing for NBC News, quote from a court transcript:

Watson: Can’t recall.

Lawyer: And do you know the differences in the religion between Shiite and Sunni Muslims?

Watson: Not technically, no.

John Lewis was until recently the FBIâ€™s deputy assistant director of counterterrorism. During his deposition on May 17, 2005, he was asked if he knew the difference between Shiites and Sunnis.

Lewis: You know, generally. Not very well.

Lawyer: Was there any relationship between the first World Trade Center bombing and the 9/11 attacks?

Lewis: I’m aware of no immediate relationship other than all emanates out of the Middle East, al-Qaida linkage, I believe. Not something I’ve studied recently that I’m conversant with.

Naturally, all terrorism “emanates out of the Middle East,” from Arabs and Muslims in particular, because the neocons say so, thus even rudimentary knowledge is not required on the part of the FBI. In fact, even basic inquisitiveness and small town police work is not necessary, as the FBI didn’t even shrug their shoulders when it turned out that eight of the so-called nine eleven hijackers were alive and well. Of course, the FBI’s role is larger and more active, as it went out of its way to foil the Zacarias Moussaoui inquiry, taking its lead from MI5, tipped off about Moussaoui’s role—as a mentally deficient patsy—from French intelligence, although the Brits did absolutely nothing about it.

No, the FBI has better things to do in service to the neocons and their Arab- and Muslim-hating handlers in Israel. For instance, last May, they entrapped and set-up Narseal Batiste and his pathetic circle of patsies in Miami. As usual, the corporate media got a lot of yardage out of that transparent fiasco, making it appear Batiste and crew were about to blow up the Sears Tower in Chicago and the FBI building in Miami, never mind they were wholly incapable of doing such and begged for material assistance from the FBI. It also did not matter that these guys followed the teachings of the Moorish Science Temple of America, not strictly Islamic but a mishmash of Buddhism, Christianity, Freemasonry, Gnosticism and Taoism.

Hey, it was enough to get Fox News watchers all worked up into a lather.

In fact, instead of going after supposed terrorists, the FBI is busy snuggling up with the scum of the earth, for instance Jack Abramoff. “Jack Abramoff, the lobbying scandal figure, has become such a chatty rat that probe insiders say he’s been given a desk to work at in the FBI. We’re told he spends up to four hours a day detailing his shady business to agents eager to nail more congressmen in the scandal. And when cooperative witnesses spend that much time inside, they get a desk. As a result of his help in the ever expanding investigation, we hear that the Feds hope to keep him in a nearby prison after he’s sentenced on his conspiracy admission,” Paul Bedard wrote for U.S. News & World Report in October. No doubt it will be one of those nice country club prisons.

But anyway, back to our blinkered Congress critters. It appears last October Congressional Quarterly “interviewed Washington counterterrorism officials and two Republican Congress members who oversaw spy agencies at the time for an Op-Ed in the New York Times, and found that they could also use ‘crash courses’ in al Qaeda and Hezbollah,” reports Raw Story, and this, in “an effort to be fair,” led to Jeff Stein’s Reyes interview. “Rep. Jo Ann Davis, R-Va., and Terry Everett, R-Ala., both back for another term, were flummoxed by such basic questions, as were several top counterterrorism officials at the FBI,” Stein wrote.

“At the time, Media Matters questioned why The New York Times let the news that top terror officials couldn’t tell Shiites from Sunnis left to be reported by an Op-Ed contributor on the back page, instead of by its own reporting staff,” writes Raw Story. “While Stein raises an important question, the fact that this information first appeared in the Times on its op-ed page raises another question: How is it that the Times has let this simple, yet critical, piece of information regarding the basic competencies of the Bush administration officials and Republican legislators managing U.S. national security go unreported in its news pages?”

Of course, the answer is right there, out in plain view. The reason the New York Times buried the story is because it is a shill for the Israelis and the neocons, even though the latter would have use believe the Times is staffed with traitors.

I guess that includes Judith “silver bullet” Miller, who, more than any other reporter—or maybe that should be neocon stenographer—unleashed a pile of lies that ultimately led to the murder of around 650,000 Iraqis.

Don’t expect a mea culpa anytime soon.