I agree with DougR (!) and Spaw. a. We already have social security cards. b. A national ID card wouldn't have done any good in this situation, since the terrorists had entered the country legally, had no criminal records, and broke no laws until they hijacked the planes. The only clues to their plans were their actions prior to the event--but it's not illegal to enroll in flight school or research crop dusting. Only good old-fashioned John LeCarre-style espionage would have helped prevent the tragedy, so I think we'd better get over our delicacy about consorting with bad guys and get back to it. These guys came from a highly sophisticated organization that has a lot of resources and has been planning for years, and only another highly sophisticated underground network is going to be effective against them. Bombing Afghanistan will achieve nothing but killing Afghanis, which the Taliban seems to be doing pretty effectively already. It will probably happen, just because some obvious response gesture has to be made, but it ain't gonna do any real good.