Posted on 10/10/2005 12:37:12 PM PDT by Graybeard58
You are an animal-control officer. One morning, you get calls about a roaming pit bull terrorizing people in several neighborhoods. Now, do you go out and impound every dog you see, or do you limit your search to pit bulls?
If the answer is that obvious, why is it wrong for federal agents and state and local police to focus their attention on Muslims when they're trying to stop Islamic terrorism?
A recent U.S. Justice Department investigation concluded agents in New Jersey's Office of Counter-Terrorism entered into the state police database at least 140 reports on people who were suspected of terrorist activities solely because they were Muslims. In response, state police summarily deleted the reports, barred counterterrorism agents from accessing the database again and removed its 14 troopers assigned to the office.
What's alarming is the feds never read the 140 reports because they lacked security clearance. They simply took the word of state police officials, who are in a turf war with the counterterrorism unit and under federal order to end racial profiling by troopers. Worse, Attorney General Peter Harvey will use Justice's findings to develop new standards for identifying potential terrorists that no doubt will be politically correct and therefore as useful as an ashtray on a motorcycle.
The database lets law-enforcers share intelligence on suspected terrorists. Individual entries range from concrete evidence to suspicions, observations and guesses. Federal guidelines -- not laws, guidelines -- say information on suspects' political or religious beliefs, associations and activities should not be filed in criminal databases lest law-enforcement agencies leave themselves open to accusations of racial profiling.
So if Muslims are seen carrying large, heavy crates into a mosque, or are showing up in large numbers at flight schools to become pilots because they say they want to fly Islamic clerics around the country, agents are not supposed to record the information in the anti-terrorism database?
Maybe nothing in the 140 reports would have helped in the war against Islamic terrorism. But by making a federal case out of the ethnic and religious components of those reports, authorities have raised the bar for what constitutes acceptable data.
Henceforth, troopers may shy away from filing notes that turn out to be vital in uncovering terrorist plots. Consequently, innocent people may die solely because agents were too busy watching their quotas of Swedes, Poles and Argentineans when they should have been dogging Muslims exclusively.
The flaw with this rhetorical question...
Muslims ARE pit-bulls.
Perhaps the author thinks that only black pitt-bulls should be targeted, but the fact is that narrowing the field down to just muslims is a reasonable first approximation.
How is "Muslim" a race? If all the terrorists were black or Asian I could see that. But "Muslim" is not a race, ergo profiling because of race doesn't apply. I bet nearly all IRA members are Catholic, but that's just a guess..........
-Henceforth, troopers may shy away from filing notes that turn out to be vital in uncovering terrorist plots.-
That's their whole plan. To keep from being caught. Freakin' brilliant, and it's frightening that the fear of an ACCUSATION will prevent law enforcement and security from doing their jobs. I just can't get over how stupid it all is. Dangerously stupid.
Ooops!
Missed one little word out of the second sentence..changed the context completely. :)
Most interesting. I'm about as pro-profile as they come, and think any state police body ought to be as well, but then there are those pesky state AG's and their law degrees. Then again, I wonder what being muslim has to do with R A C I A L profiling? Hmmm?
Doesn't the buck have to stop somewhere? Wouldn't Homeland Security have final say on these types of issues? If they do not, then why do they exist?
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