Kurt
Nimmo
Thursday, December 14, 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: “Do
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 FBI’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.
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