The democratic Party appointed Texas deputy and party’s Hispani group president, Silvestre Reyes, as next chairman of the U.S. House of Representatives intelligence Permanent Committee. Former Border Patrol agent, Mr Reyes is especially known for his action of Mexican immigration regulation.
Elected to Congress in 1996, he sits for 10 years in this committee, where he receives a $165 200 annual compensation. We imagine then that the man had enough time to form on the main questions of foreign policy and defence.

Nevertheless, interviewed by Congressional Quarterly, Mr Reyes showed his total ignorance of the Middle East. If he remembered that Saudi Arabia is Sunni and Iran is Shiite, he thought that Al-Qaïda is a " mainly Shiite " organization, and did not know to which branch of Islam should be attached the Hezbollah origin (« Democrats’ New Intelligence Chairman Needs a Crash Course on al Qaeda » By Jeff Stein, CQ National Security, December 8th, 2006.).

Silvestre Reyes will have, henceforth, access to the United-Stator’s intelligence agencies’ most secret information, the same way as the president, the vice-president and the Senate speaker. It will be up to him, in view of this information, to control these agencies work and the foreign and defence policy determined by the White House.
His incompetence, already, is a surety of Democratic party’s will not to hinder Bush administration’s action in this metter.