Originally Posted by H2O_Goalie

Believe me, I'm the first person to realize that simply appearing to be Middle Eastern doesn't cut it. Timothy McVeigh was a white boy like me. And while I totally acknowledge that anyone could be a terrorist...you can't deny that the 19 asshats who got this all started (and good old Mr. OBL) have strikingly similar physical characteristics and come from a certain part of the world. A part of the world which contains an awful lot of people that for right or wrong would like to inflict as much damage on us as they could (and yes, I realize that (1) there are an equal number of people over there who like us and (2) we're not entirely blameless in the way some of them feel about us).

Physical/ethnic "profiling" isn't perfect; personally I have qualms about it...but it's one tool in the toolbox. It can't be entirely discounted. I don't believe in stupidly giving up important freedoms...but neither do I believe in flying completely in the face of common sense. There's a fine line in there that needs to be found and straddled.