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I just don't know. Everything is so normal in my home town. The kids ride their bikes up and down the block, people shop, the kids go to school. And yet we are on high alert and fighter jets patrol the skies. I really have not been scared. Well I freaked out a little bit when everybody was writing articles about small pox. But that has died down as it has become clearer that it is very difficult to get and spread the stuff.

So I keep thinking there won't be any more attacks because of the increased law enforcement, public vigilance and new laws and so on. And now that the Taliban is about done in and the hunt is on for binLaden I think the terrorists are going to be discouraged and more than that, realize that the more mayhem they commit the more the world turns against them.

But then I start thinking it really could be EASY to do certain things. Not big things like the WTC, but small things like the truck bombs in malls. But nothing has happened so far and I wonder why. If as is suspected the terrorists can now act on their own without orders from headquarters why have they not done anything? One might beging to think that the government has exaggerated the threat. Not on purpose but out of an excess of caution. Then you think of the WTC and you can't blame them for all the actions being taken. It's a strange time in our history.

I wish I could tell you that it's time to feel better but I don't think we will ever enjoy the same feeling of security we used to have, again. Israel is everywhere now, if you know what I mean. As far as smallpox goes, you know, we're going to be vaccinated for it by and by. I think if they had had it it would have been unleashed by now...the same goes for so-called suitcase nukes, et cetera et cetera. Still, the attacks on the WTC and the Pentagon were stunningly brilliant. They required an incredible amount of prior planning, and, frankly, were well-executed DESPITE the incredible clumsiness and lack of subtlety of the agents involved. (Come ON, not at least *pretending* to CARE about how to land a commercial jet?) The plans, frankly, were more complicated than they had to be. The terrorists were freakishly LUCKY because they were so clumsy that they should have been caught. A more self-disciplined breed of terrorist would be able to get through ANY amount of security; the degree of security we're striving for probably would only stop the very clumsiest. We couldn't LIVE under security tight enough to stop better ones.

The main problem we face now is that all the bad guys worldwide have been shown that McVeigh did it the HARD way. I hope our intelligence is up for tracking down all the copycats that are probably right now plotting how to get their 15 minutes of infamy, times a million.

If as is suspected the terrorists can now act on their own without orders from headquarters why have they not done anything?

I think CC's analysis in #21 is exactly the reason why.... I think we clamped down so hard in the days & weeks after 9/11 (think of the hundreds of people still being detained)--in ways we probably can't even imagine (at least I hope so)--that it has seriously impaired their ability to get anything done, and perhaps even their will to do it.

For example, there's a story in the Ottawa papers up here about a guy who's money transfer shop was shut down. It looks like a very honest small business, right here in downtown Ottawa.

Unfortunately the article is sympathetic to him ("If you send your mom money, is that supporting a terrorist? He's quoted as saying), but apparently Al Quaeda or other terrorist groups got a portion of every transfer that was made. That's just one example, and it happened all over the world.