More stuff you can search with Google:  Google returns links to display

• UPS or FedEx packages: enter the tracking number, digits only
• US Maps by area code
• UPC product descriptions:  enter the 12-digit number under the bar doce
• Flight status details: enter the airline and number (eg Qantas 26)
• Vehicle identifier:  enter the VIN from the door frame, like JH4NA1157MT001832 to find out the car's year, make, and model

  3:43:17 PM    

MSNBC Poll on Bush and the 9/11 Charges:  Amazing disconnect between 21000 self-selected web respondents and the Newsweek poll 1000 randomized respondents.  75% of web respondents say Bush has not taken terrorism seriously enough; 61% of the public think they have.  60% on the web thought Clinton took it seriously, 65% of the public think not seriously enough.   Many possible explanations; an interesting one is that the more informed you are about the story, the less you believe the administration.  3:25:01 PM    

Terrorists Don't Need States: "The Bush team did not see Al Qaeda as an urgent threat. .. One example from the panel's report: the senior Pentagon official responsible for counterterrorism is the assistant secretary for special operations and low-intensity conflict. Even by September 11, 2001, no one had been appointed to that post. ..

[It's] a new phenomenon in global politics: terrorism that is not state-sponsored but society-sponsored. Few in the American government fully grasped that a group of people without a state's support could pose a mortal threat.. An American official closely involved with counterterrorism [was asked] about state sponsorship. He replied, "Well, all that's left is Iran and to a lesser extent Syria, and it's mostly directed against Israel. States have been getting out of the terror business since the late 1980s. We have kept many governments on the list of state sponsors for political reasons. The reality is that the terror we face is mostly unconnected to states." Today's terrorists are harbored in countries like Spain and Germany—entirely unintentionally. They draw on support not from states but private individuals—Saudi millionaires, Egyptian radicals, Yemenite preachers." This makes the "war of ideas" more important, and by Clarke's analysis, makes the war on Iraq more damaging.

  3:16:46 PM