The Hammond Report

The newly appointed chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, Democrat Silvestre Reyes recently failed a «test» given to him by Congressional Quarterly's National Security Editor, Jeff Stein.

Mr. Stein embarrasses Rep. Reyes in his article by asking him if Al Qaeda is made up of Sunni or Shia and what Hezbollah is. Reyes answered wrong on the Al Qaeda question and was unable to answer the Hezbollah question.

At first I thought it was funny and felt smug that he didn't know but being honest with myself, I couldn't answer the questions either. I consider myself fairly knowledgeable in the Middle East but I discovered that I didn't really know as much as I thought.

Reyes probably should know, but I know that as a Rep. he has a lot of work on his plate every day and just finished an election campaign. He and all the Reps are very busy people with a tremendous amount of responsibilities. They can't know everything.

So I say give the guy a break! He's a smart man with a good staff. He'll soon know all there is to know about the Middle East and the situation there.

By the way I now know that Al Qaeda is made up of Sunii who hate the Shiite and that Hezbollah is an Iranian organization that is close to taking over Lebanon and helping train Iraqi Shiites to kill Sunnis hoping to start a civil war.