Posted on 01/03/2007 10:34:12 PM PST by jamesestrada
The Ultimate Oxymoron: House Intelligence
By James Estrada
January 3, 2007
A couple of weeks back Texas Democrat Sylvestre Reyes was appointed to head the House Intelligence Committee by Speaker-elect Nancy Pelosi . Reyes was interviewed by a local paper that asked several questions on the make up of Al Qaeda and he missed every one. Once he realized his bad scoring Reyes asked the folks from the paper if they spoke Spanish, citing that his Spanish was better than his English and then in Spanish asked why the paper was asking those questions (1).
Reyes was picked over the obvious first choice in qualifications, California Congresswoman Jane Harman, ostensibly because Pelosi didn’t like her. Harman was not only senior on the Intelligence Committee, but she was also senior on the Defense Committee and was passed over for the Chair at that post as well (2). This article is a day late because when I heard about the Reyes controversy I thought for sure Pelosi would replace him. If she had, then this would have only been a story of favoritism winning out over competence.
The above is an incredibly sad story for a variety of reasons. First, I am not picking on Reyes, I am certain Reyes is not the only ignorant person in Congress that can’t tell the difference between a Sunni and a Shiite. Second, I am certain that he is not the only person in Congress that would not know a terrorist if they blew up his desk.
What is sad is that not only did Reyes make it to the committee knowing virtually nothing about Al Qaeda, and manage to stay on the committee knowing nothing about Al Qaeda, but apparently he didn’t make an effort to learn anything after he was appointed to head the committee.
Then there is the aspect of once this ignorance came to light the house leadership didn’t do anything about it, Reyes is still the committee chair, even after the obvious expression of incompetence, and his stated lack of knowledge of English. Throw in the fact that you have a congressman who is representing people of the United States admitting that his English is insufficient to properly field questions about items that he was briefed on in English which leaves us to wonder if he understood the briefing.
This leaves two very unappealing choices: He speaks too poor a quality of English to understand what he is being told, or he understands English just fine and he is too stupid to retain what he has been told.
Speaker elect Pelosi has announced sweeping changes in congress, no more free trips, no more gifts and no more goodies for House members, ethics reforms for one and all. Sadly she has not announced a means of testing member’s competence on issues; testing so the members will be qualified to make judgments on committing billions of your tax dollars. She has not yet made any seniority requirement to try to insure that someone that votes to send your sons and daughters to war knows what they are doing, who we are fighting and why.
Pelosi has said she would like a tax increase, do all of these folks know what a “Laffer Curve”(3) is? Are they aware that the government can charge lower tax rates and yet get more money? (A Laffer curve is the point where the government collects the most revenue which is not the point of the highest tax rate).
What this means at the end of the day is that we didn’t get the best person for the job, the person isn’t being replaced when his incompetence is obvious and nobody is upset that his lack of mastery of the English language, by his own admission, makes him incapable of carrying out the tasks for which he has been appointed.
Reyes isn’t there as a shinning example of an American of Hispanic decent who is the best for the job, his abilities harkens back to reports of the absolute incompetent holding jobs that required high qualification from the early days of affirmative action.
Many of these folks in the incoming congress are supported by the teachers union, which is fighting against mandatory testing and standards in schools. I can only wonder if there had been mandatory testing and standards in place years ago would Sylvestre Reyes’ English have been better?
If Reyes’ English was better, would he have known who the folks at Al Qaeda were when he was interviewed? Finally I have one statement in closing, for all the folks that don’t see a bilingual country as a problem: I give you Sylvestre Reyes, who by his own admission did not understand enough English to field basic questions.
1 Bloomberg.com/ Margaret Carlson
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601039&sid=awoXewBhNDIQ&refer=columnist_carlson
2 Washingtonpost.com/ Weisman/Slevin
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/11/28/AR2006112800937.html
3 Answers.com A Laffer Curve defined
http://www.answers.com/topic/laffer-curve
So now we'll have a comedian in charge of House Intelligence. These next two years, though sad, will be a laugher.
I agree with you but the sad part is this: we are at war, spending billions of dollars and losing a lot of people and the funding for this is in the hands of someone that doesn't know who we are fighting.
I don't like sticking up for a Democrat, but I think some high up people in the FBI were also unaware of the differences between Sunnis and Shia. And do we really think that all Republican congressmen know it too?
Of course not. But all the Republicans won't be chairing the Intelligence Committee.
The author did name Harman as an alternative. I think it's a good article, albeit a little repetitive.
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