Let's rewind to May of 2006 for a moment.
Back then Rep. Peter Hoekstra (R-MI) chaired the House Permanent Select Committe on Intelligence (these days he is the ranking Republican).
With Hoekstra holding the gavel, the Committee received a presentation from a highly-paid Pentagon defense contractor in which a gamer video created by a 25-year-old Dutch hospital employee was identified as an Al Qaida propaganda tool. As we reported on GamePolitics at the time:
The influential committee, chaired by Rep. Peter Hoekstra... watched footage of animated combat in which characters depicted as Islamic insurgents killed U.S. troops in battle. The video began with the voice of a male narrator saying, "I was just a boy when the infidels came to my village in Blackhawk helicopters..."
Several GP readers immediately noticed that the voice-over was actually lifted from Team America: World Police, an outrageous 2004 satirical film produced by the creators of the popular South Park comedy series. At about the same time, gamers involved in the online Battlefield 2 community were pointing out the video footage shown to Congress was not [an Al Qaeda] mod of BF2 at all, but standard game footage from EA's Special Forces BF2 add-on module, a retail product widely available in the United States...
GamePolitics contacted Hoekstra's office, but no comment on the Committee's faux pas was offered.
That was then.
Late last week CQ Politics reported that Hoekstra completely blew the lid on tight security surrounding a secret fact-finding mission to Iraq:
A congressional trip to Iraq this weekend was supposed to be a secret. But the cat’s out of the bag now, thanks to a member of the House Intelligence Committee who broke an embargo via Twitter...
“Just landed in Baghdad,” messaged Hoekstra, a former chairman of the Intelligence panel and now the ranking member, who is routinely entrusted to keep some of the nation’s most closely guarded secrets.
Before the delegation left Washington, they were advised to keep the trip to themselves for security reasons... Nobody expected, though, that a lawmaker with such an extensive national security background would be the first to break the silence. And in such a big way.
Not only did Hoekstra reveal the existence of the lawmakers’ trip, but included details about their itinerary in updates posted every few hours on his Twitter page, until he suddenly stopped, for some reason, on Friday morning.
GP: Looking at the bright side, I guess we can be cheered that members of Congress are catching on to Twitter...
Comments
lol fail.
http://www.eliteownage.com/nice
What is the big fucking deal with twitter anyway? Goddamn.
It is adictive.
It is an effective self-marketing tool if you are consistent with it. People who use it to say they had eggs for breakfast don't know how to use Twitter.
GameSnooper
I have to second that... I still don't understand the real use of it other than live information for the election and other events, and it was bad at that even... too much junk. They are always filled with junk if it is about anything important...
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And politicians continue to fail at using Twitter...
http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2009/02/virginia-gop-chairmans-blog-o...
GameSnooper
Fucking hypocrit.
I love those the "real americans" are those posign the greatest threats to it.
I believe this one deserves the all important....
Ha ha! Seconded! BTW, Frank has that as his avvie on one of the sites he's on.
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"Game on, brothers and sisters." -Leet Gamer Jargon
I see your facepalm and raise you an epic fail
http://i32.photobucket.com/albums/d45/capthavic/poster853746.jpg
There have always been motherf*ckers, there will always be motherf*ckers, but what we can't do is let them control our motherf*cking lives. -John Oliver, December 1st, 2008
As one of the people who voted for Rep. Hoekstra, reading this hurt a bit. However, for the most part, I've been pretty pleased with what he's done in Washington. No doubt someone could dig something out from his past and beat me over the head with it, but I just felt that someone should at least stick up for him a little bit.
8:34AM - just touched down in Iraq
8:40AM - driving north on a dusty road away from the camp
8:50AM - someone spotted us...how could they know?
ROFL!
And seriously, first that video and now this? Every one in the intelligence community must have face palmed themselves when they heard about this.
8:52 brb, al qaida.
"That's not ironic. That's justice."
Guy's like the Kelly Bundy of Capitol Hill.
"There is no sin except stupidity." - Oscar Wilde
damn, haven't been this amused for a while...