I'm sure the IRA is predominantly Protestant, too....

Well, it looks like Pelosi was choosing between a disgraced federal judge, her political enemy or a guy who can't tell you the difference between Sunni and Shia when she chose who would head the House Intelligence Cmte.

http://public.cq.com/public/20061211_homeland.html

 

Heaven forbid Pelosi chose her enemy (Harmon), who has a clue as to what she's talking about,

 

Our government -- Dems and Repubs alike -- don't seem to be big fans of Sun Tzu.

 

Well, this seems like a convenient story, since this one's been in circulation for two years now.
http://www.rawstory.com/news/2006/Ambassador_claims_shortly_before_invasion_Bush_0804.html

And Harman was wrong about pre-war intelligence, wrong about WMD's, and wrong (INHO) on domestic wiretapping. So, "she knows what she's doing" is, well, arguable.

 

I think it's pretty clear that all of our leaders don't have much of a grasp of the finer points of Islam and the Arabic world. But that's why they have staffs -- to have people whose job it is to feed them on a need-to-know basis the grasp of the finer points of, well, everything.

 

Bob --
Good on you for pointing that out. The problem is also that, most of the people who knew the most about the region were saying from the jump that this was a terrible idea, and they were either run out or marginalized by the ignorant people in charge, who didn't know anything at all -- not dissimilar to what happened in the 1960's, when we got involved in SE Asia having red-baited the veteran Asia-hands out of the government a decade earlier.

 

The fundamental difference between Sunni and Shia is a finer point of Islam and Arabic world?

 

I'd suggest there's plenty of ignorance to go around.

 

Bob - a staff is there to handle the details. Knowing whether Al Qeda is predominantly Shiite or Sunni is not a small detail for the staff to figure later. Or Hezbolla's leanings. These are the basic building blocks the leader of the Intelligence Committee chair should know!

Like Ted Stevens, who for crying out loud, is the chairman of the United States Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation; and he thinks the internet is a series of tubes! And a staffer of his sent him an internet last week!

We elect absolute garbage to run this country. Garbage in, garbage out.

 

Fenian, from what I've heard on the talking head shows, she seems intelligent. Guess that's my problem, watching too much CNN.

 

Maybe, but a Democratic majority that won primarily because of a clusterfuck of a war probably shouldn't be promoting someone so closely involevd with enabling said war.

 

To many Americans, Islam is just Islam. It may be the same for many Arabs regarding, say, Catholicism and Orthodox Christianity.