Day: July 6, 2008

A troubling development


I read this article and my jaw hit the floor!

The Justice Department is considering letting the FBI investigate Americans without any evidence of wrongdoing, relying instead on a terrorist profile that could single out Muslims, Arabs or other racial and ethnic groups.

*snip*

Among factors that could make someone subject of an investigation is travel to regions of the world known for terrorist activity, access to weapons or military training, along with the person’s race or ethnicity. Law enforcement officials say the policy would help them find terrorists before they strike.

“We don’t know what we don’t know. And the object is to cut down on that,” said one FBI official.

It might not be the same as making someone wear a yellow star of David, or bringing them to a congressional committee to answer questions about their supposed loyalty but it’s pretty close to that.  One only needs to be a Muslim American with a funny sounding name, who owns, legally, a firearm and be the target of an FBI probe.  Such a description applies to folks like me and several million others who have done nothing wrong.  This hearkens back to the sorry days of American history when people were persecuted because of the ideas they held, the color of their skin and now possibly their religious preference or ethnic origin.  As Yogi Berra once said, this is like deja vu all over again.

A shot across the bow


Iraq is the neighbor of Iran and that fact is not lost on those in power in Iraq, despite the “reassuring” presence of American soldiers.  Exerting what little they have left of their sovereignty, the Iraqi Prime Minister, Nur al-Maliki recently said:

he was concerned about military pressure aimed at Iran regarding the country’s nuclear activities, adding he would not permit U.S. forces to use Iraqi land, airspace and waterways as a means for attacking states in the region.

He said the Mideast is in a “fragile” state and “fomenting tension in the region and pushing for military action against Tehran could wreak havoc on the entire region, including Iraq.”

It’s quite possible Maliki is using his objection to the US attacking Iran from Iraqi soil as a negotiation tool for the stalled  US/Iraqi security agreement .  Even though the last NIE on Iran stated unequivocally that Iran had stopped its weapons program in ’03 and was at least 10 years from being able to make a nuclear device, a preemptive strike is almost certain to get the Iranians to hasten those estimates considerably.