U.S. Rep. Cynthia McKinney, D-Ga., has charged Bush with racial profiling. She has asked for an investigation into the FBI report that prompted these measures, saying that the report was too "vague" to justify any government action.
In a radio interview, McKinney suggested that the Bush administration was fictionalizing a terrorist threat in order to justify imposing his conservative domestic agenda on an unsuspecting America. "I'm not saying he made it up; I'm just saying that an investigation might show that he did," said McKinney.
Responding to such attacks, the White House is urging Americans to be patient.
"We understand Americans' concern; President Bush did not take these steps without careful consideration," said White House press secretary Ari Fleischer. "Given that American lives were at stake, President Bush felt he had no choice."
The security threat to which Bush allegedly was responding came in the form of a memo to the president during a routine daily briefing while Bush was vacationing at his home in Crawford, Texas. Bush had requested an intelligence analysis of possible attacks by "al-Qaida," a radical Muslim terrorist organization headed by a wealthy Saudi Arabian exile named Osama bin Laden.
Bush specifically was interested in possible attacks on American soil, as most intelligence reports previously had focused on threats against U.S. targets overseas. Al-Qaida groups, which operate as small cells, claimed responsibility for several attacks on American targets during the Clinton administration. According to White House sources, Bush was concerned that bin Laden and al-Qaida had not been taken seriously enough during the previous administration.
The new report said that bin Laden followers might seek to hijack U.S. airliners.
"So what?" demanded McKinney. "Since when don't we know that terrorists might seek to hijack U.S. airliners? It's cold in Alaska, too. Did anybody mention that?"
Fleischer noted during a press conference that another FBI memo, written in July, mentioned that two students at an Arizona flight school were thought to be linked to al-Qaida.
"President Bush merely connected the dots," said Fleischer. "When you have two possible al-Qaida members training to fly airplanes in the U.S., combined with information that bin Laden may be targeting American airliners, you can't just hope nothing bad will happen. You have to act, and that's exactly what the president did."
The Muslim American Society and The Council on American Islamic Relations joined McKinney yesterday at a rally in front of the Lincoln Memorial to demand Bush's impeachment. McKinney has accepted campaign contributions from dozens of Muslim-Americans, some of whom also have donated to terrorist organizations.
"Just because two flight students are 'thought' to be members of al-Qaida, Bush is rounding up Muslims?" McKinney said at the rally. "Can anybody say, 'racial profiling'?
"African-Americans cannot stand by and let this happen to people of color. When you start rounding up men of Middle Eastern descent just because some terrorists happen to be of Middle Eastern descent, that's not 'connecting the dots,' my fellow Americans, that's tightening the noose!"
Bush will address the nation tonight at 8 on all major networks. At 9 p.m. CNN's "Larry King Live" will air a live interview with special guest Osama bin Laden.