The circumstances left no room for smugness. Canada might have been spared the type of attack that in 10 synchronized blasts transformed Madrid into a cauldron of despair and political anger over the past two weeks. We might even have our status as non-members in the so-called "coalition of the willing" to thank for that mercy, as some critics of the war have suggested. . . .

[. . . . ] France, once the whipping boy of U.S. conservatives for its early opposition to invasion, announced it was investigating threats by Islamic militants, possibly made in response to its legislation banning religious headgear in schools. "A heavy offensive will take place on the lands of the allies of Satan," said one letter sent to Le Parisien newspaper. "We are going to plunge France into terror and remorse." In Germany, police squads were dispatched to guard a major computer trade fair in Hanover, while in Britain undercover police officers jacked up surveillance on the London Underground, searching passengers and reminding them to watch for suspicious-looking packages.

[. . . . ] Alan Bell, a Toronto-based security consultant who monitors the terrorist threat in Canada, agrees that the danger is real, though he fears that most Canadians are unaware of its full extent. That's partly due to Ottawa's policy of secrecy, he says; for every CSIS or RCMP brief alleging terrorist activity on Canadian soil, there has been denial or reassurance by senior politicians. "These things get fobbed off as fiction," says Bell. "But the conversations I have with people who know these sorts of things suggest we've had some lucky escapes."

Would that Spain had shared our good fortune -- or the benefit of hindsight. As the investigation into the train bombings progressed last week, authorities charged three Moroccans with 190 counts of murder and two Indians with collaborating with a terrorist organization. Among the accused was one man with links to al-Qaeda whose whereabouts Spanish police knew before the blast. According to published reports in Barcelona, Moroccan authorities warned their Spanish counterparts in 2003 that Jamal Zougam, a phone salesman arrested two days after the bombings, was on his way back to Spain and that he was considered to be a "very active terrorist."