Originally Posted by Gargoyle

I often hear American citizens talking amongst themselves in foreign languages in the check-in lines for int'l flights. Typically the parents are naturalized (foreign born) citizens travelling with their native U.S. born children. Remember, the true strength of American comes from the fact that we are the greatest melting pot, the most diverse mix of people, in the history of the world. Harassing, er, I mean ssss'ing someone just because they speak another language just adds to the international impression of American arrogance and xenophobia, which adds to anti-American sentiment world wide, and is one way we help create petri dishes where those who hate the U.S. can thrive.

Weren't the U.K. tube bombers British subjects? If they grew up in the U.K., attending school there, profiling by accent or passport would miss them.

As to profiling Muslims, how do you tell a Bosnian Muslim from a Bosnian Christian from a Bosnian Jew from a Croatian or a Serb or a Greek, Albanian, Italian, Bulgarian or Spaniard? By how they look? Or do you propose that everyone carry ID's stating their ethnic background? At what point do we stop being a free country and become a police state?

Just to confuse the discussion, the majority of suicide bombers world wide in the past dozen years were not Muslims- the biggest single group were members of the Tamil Tigers.