I realize this is not something that anyone who is trying to be elected to office can say, but it seems pretty clear that predicting who is going to later be a terrorist is really hard, if not impossible. We can up the scrutiny if we want, but the more you do that the more non-terrorist get their lives ruined, and that can easily become a bigger problem than terrorism itself. Terrorism is a really really small problem in this country, after all. Statistically, you are so much more likely to be hurt by... well just about anything else. Wrecking the lives of people with any connection to certain scary parts of the world is going to hurt more people than terrorism will. Plus, it might drive more people to terrorism, rendering the whole thing a useless sadistic enterprise.
