Inhofe: 'I Believe In Racial And Ethnic Profiling"

Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.) knows he's not politically correct, but he doesn't care: "I believe in racial and ethnic profiling," the GOP senator announced at a Senate Armed Services Committee review of Fort Hood shootings on Thursday.

From Inhofe's statement at the hearing:

I'm, for one -- I know it's not politically correct to say it -- I believe in racial and ethnic profiling. I think if you're looking at people getting on an airplane and you have X amount of resources to get into it, you need to get at the targets, not my wife. And I just think it's something that should be looked into. The statement that's made, it's probably 90 percent true with some exceptions, like the Murrah federal office building in my state, Oklahoma. Those people, they were not Muslims, they were not Middle Easterners. But when you hear that not all Middle Easterners or Muslims between the age of 20 and 35 are terrorists, but all terrorists are Muslims or Middle Easterners between the age of 20 and 35, that's by and large true.

Many experts, however, disagree with Inhofe's view that profiling would be an effective approach to increasing airline security. In fact, studies have found racial profiling to be no more effective than a random screening process. Furthermore, a report released yesterday by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee warned of an influx of "blond-haired, blue-eyed" Al-Qaeda terrorists.

Watch Inhofe's comments on profiling: