CQ interview with Silvestre Reyes
Silvestre Reyes (D-TX) is the incoming House intelligence committee Chairman so you might think that he would know a little something about al Qaeda. You’d be wrong.
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?â€
“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 al Qaeda consider all Shiites to be heretics.
This is the same reporter who had earlier in the year posed the same question to several Republican leaders and FBI counterterrorism officials, most of whom also failed. What the hell is wrong with our government?
The obvious thing wrong with our government is that they are not trying to find Bin Laden, or defuse Al Qaeda. This just proves it. Bin Laden is the best thing that has happened to Bush! How else would he get enough support for an illegal war? (Even though they aren’t even related - Hussain would not work with Bin Laden!)