There is a new anti-smoking medicine out there. I first tried it during a business trip in Scotland. It works as follows: you gurgle with it before you smoke, it washes out and purifies your taste buds such that if you try to pop in a cigarette in the next 24 hours, you cannot help but cringe at the unbearably bitter taste of the toxins contained therein.

Now, whether you can actually taste them or not, these toxins are always there when you smoke, doing their number on your lungs, blood, skin, teeth, hair, etc. Smokers may think they are better of not tasting the toxins; but then again, if they could always taste them, they would realize the reality of what they are getting into, the reality of feeding on poison. Who would continue to smoke if the act of smoking itself was an unbearable experience and not a seemingly pleasant and rewarding one? Who would smoke if the act of smoking actually felt as repulsive as its effect?

You can go to war against a people or an entity and that is where Al-Qaeda comes in. So President Obama was correct in stating that we are at war with Al Qaeda, and I would add other imitation groups like Al Qaeda.

Islamic rights advocates say there’s been a rise in the number of threats directed at local Muslims. And some of these threats are being delivered right to their doors. CBS 2’s Mike Puccinelli reports.

When Ahmed Rehab walks up to his suburban home these days it’s with a new sense of awareness. That’s because of what he found waiting for him in his mailbox just a few days ago, a postmarked typewritten hate-filled letter complete with a death threat.

“I’m concerned about national security here, not civil liberties per se, and that’s why I oppose racial profiling. Because from a national security prospective it will not work neither logically nor scientifically.

This guy seemed to have left every clue short of raise his hand and proclaim, “arrest me, I am a terrorist!”

2010-01-07-umar_farouk.jpg Can someone explain to me how he managed to purchase a one way ticket, pay for it in cash, board the plane with no luggage, have his own father report him as a radicalized threat to a CIA base in Nigeria, be denied a visa to the UK where he previously lived and worked, and on top of that be on an active US terror watch list for two years, yet still not be flagged by the system as a security threat?

And can someone explain to me how after those six glaring red flags were missed - not to mention the explosive material in his underwear - the debate today is not about why and how they were missed, but about whether he could have been flagged for being of a certain skin color, hair texture, place of birth, faith, or namesake?

The racial profiling argument is lazy and unimaginative; most of all it is irresponsible because it evades the real problem starring us in the face: a fatal breakdown in communication between our intelligence units. Ironically, this is a problem so troubling that an entire new department, the National Homeland Security Department, was created with the sole mission to address it.

The core of the problem is that Muslims are seen as a Monolith by the media and so when one Muslim commits and act of terror or error, all Muslims are brought to bear for that Act.

CAIR-Chicago Executive Director Ahmed Rehab talks to Shari Elliker about the failures of racial profiling and the outspokenness of American Muslims in condemning acts of terror.

All terrorists that we have come to know of, who have performed or attempted acts of terrorism on a plane, have actually not been engaged in outward Islamic behavior.

“There are so many indicators in every instance of a potential bombing or an actual terror act that we always have knowledge of. The question is do we act upon it? Are we competent enough to be aware of that or not? In the case of the 19 hijackers of 9/11, we had files on every one of the 19. Condoleezza Rica had those files. Those files were not properly scrutinized. Its not for a lack of intelligence its for a lack of acting on that intelligence in a timely manner.”

“To me, the lesson learned from the potential Christmas Day bombing is that we missed clear red flags and we can’t ignore that and start talking about new measures while the existing measures could have work had we actually implemented them,” says Ahmed Rehab.

“The problem is if you try to hone in on those who look Muslim and I don’t even know what that means in the first place but lets assume were somehow able to figure that out — you are really honing in on 1.4 billion people around the world,” says Ahmed.