Catching up on old news....

F.B.I. Told of Worry Over Flight Lessons Before Sept. 11

WASHINGTON, May 3 — An F.B.I. agent in Phoenix told counterterrorism officials at the bureau's headquarters last July that he had detected an alarming pattern of Arab men with possible ties to terrorism taking aviation-related training, and urged a nationwide review of the trend, according to F.B.I. officials. ...

... Most Middle East countries send pilots from their commercial airlines and their military to train in the United States. At the time, F.B.I. officials believed that a study of the Arab presence at American flight schools could be done as only a long-term project taking one to two years. No action had been taken on the issue by Sept. 11.

F.B.I. officials said there was reluctance at the time to mount such a major review because of a concern that the bureau would be criticized for ethnic profiling of foreigners. Bureau officials were also aware of the obstacles in asking colleges and universities to cooperate on such a sweeping review of students without specific evidence that they were guilty of any crimes.

Profiling is a legitimate tool of law enforcement, period. Sometimes a given crime/criminal profile is going to include a racial element, but that single element alone is not the entire profile. When it is, that is "racial profiling."

If you see a string of actions/crimes/terrorist "incidents" that are all carried out by members of a specific group, that is not racial profiling. That is a straight description of the facts from each case, outlining their common characteristics. So many minority "advocacy" groups have distorted this simple fact for their own ends, apparently in an effort to remove an effective, efficient tool from law enforcement's arsenal.

I wish that some senior members of law enforcement--and the administration--would stand up and say these things aloud. You have four airliners hijacked, all were hijacked by men of "Middle Eastern descent," plus a string of other common denominators. That makes a profile, and if that profile pops up at another airliner that individual deserves special scrutiny. It's not racism, it's a reality based on a pattern of behavior.