Monday, Apr. 12, 2004 12:06 PM EDT
NY Times: Bush Should Have Used Racial Profiling to Prevent 9/11
Don't look now, but the oh-so politically correct New York Times has just endorsed racial profiling as a critical tool in fighting the war on terrorism.
In fact, says the Times, if only President Bush had ordered airports to use "threat profiling" to screen out suspected Muslim terrorists after receiving a CIA warning in August 2001 that al Qaeda was preparing to hijack U.S. airplanes, the 9/11 attacks might have been prevented.
"After receiving that briefing memo entitled 'Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S.'," says the Times in Monday's lead editorial, Bush should have departed from his vacation in Crawford, Texas and "rushed back to the White House, assembled all his top advisers and demanded to know what, in particular, was being done to screen airline passengers to make sure people who fit the airlines' threat profiles were being prevented from boarding American planes."
Of course, since all the terrorists mentioned in the August CIA memo were Middle Eastern radical Muslims, passengers of Middle Eastern appearance would have "fit the airline's threat profile."
Hence, under the Times plan, Muslims by the thousands would have been yanked from airport ticket lines for thorough investigation.
But there's a reason that, even after 9/11, anti-terrorist racial profiling is verboten. It's because newspapers like the Times have spent the last 20 years demonizing law enforcement officials who even hint that racial profiling can be an effective way of ferreting out the bad guys.
The anti-profiling taboo has gone so far that often the Times and other like-minded news outlets will leave race out of the mix when describing a criminal suspect who's on the loose.
Alas, had the Times
NY Times: Bush Should Have Used Racial Profiling to Prevent 9/11
Don't look now, but the oh-so politically correct New York Times has just endorsed racial profiling as a critical tool in fighting the war on terrorism.
In fact, says the Times, if only President Bush had ordered airports to use "threat profiling" to screen out suspected Muslim terrorists after receiving a CIA warning in August 2001 that al Qaeda was preparing to hijack U.S. airplanes, the 9/11 attacks might have been prevented.
"After receiving that briefing memo entitled 'Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S.'," says the Times in Monday's lead editorial, Bush should have departed from his vacation in Crawford, Texas and "rushed back to the White House, assembled all his top advisers and demanded to know what, in particular, was being done to screen airline passengers to make sure people who fit the airlines' threat profiles were being prevented from boarding American planes."
Of course, since all the terrorists mentioned in the August CIA memo were Middle Eastern radical Muslims, passengers of Middle Eastern appearance would have "fit the airline's threat profile."
Hence, under the Times plan, Muslims by the thousands would have been yanked from airport ticket lines for thorough investigation.
But there's a reason that, even after 9/11, anti-terrorist racial profiling is verboten. It's because newspapers like the Times have spent the last 20 years demonizing law enforcement officials who even hint that racial profiling can be an effective way of ferreting out the bad guys.
The anti-profiling taboo has gone so far that often the Times and other like-minded news outlets will leave race out of the mix when describing a criminal suspect who's on the loose.
Alas, had the Times
