Red Zone: Montreal

Here's a sobering story that will cause a lot of concern for people in my hometown:

Montreal police are scrambling to reassure commuters after a Spanish newspaper said a man arrested in the wake of the 2004 Madrid bombings had detailed information about the Quebec city's subway system.

El Pais daily newspaper reported Tuesday that Spanish police found information about the Montreal subway system as well as data on Spanish trains and a map of the London system on Abdelhak Chergui's personal laptop computer.

This is disturbing when you consider that trains in Spain and London have already been successfully attacked. Will Montreal complete the trifecta?

What's even more disturbing is the pitiful communication between law enforcement agencies on this. (Have we learned nothing?)

The information was apparently known to Spanish authorities six months ago, but both the RCMP and police forces in Montreal said they only found out about the information through the media on Wednesday. However, RCMP Insp. Tom O'Neill said Spanish authorities had passed the information on to RCMP liaison officers
in Europe.

Is that a joke or what? The RCMP didn't see fit to let their local force in on this tidbit? Or the Montreal police and the Surete du Quebec? And how could a Montreal police inspector insist that, "The information was analyzed and validated. There is no threat as we speak now." when they had only received the information that very day - through the media? That sounds like a PR statement if I ever heard one.

As we have seen from terrorists, any city in the free world is a potential target. But it's interesting to speculate on why Montreal would be on a par with Madrid and London, at least on Chergui's laptop. An attack on Montreal might dispel the idea that the Madrid bombing was to influence that country's Iraq war policy. The attack on London has already shattered the myth that "we have to fight them over there so we don't have to fight them here." Could a Montreal attack be in response to the Canadian presence in Afghanistan? If Canada were attacked, I think that might result in more of a resolve among Canadians to be active on more fronts in the war on terror. There's a side of me that thinks that all of the conventional wisdom about recent terrorism is dead wrong. Could it be that all of these attacks weren't to discourage a fight, but to encourage it? I can't believe for a second that Al Qaeda actually believed the U.S. wouldn't fight back after 9/11. They might have wanted to embolden Spain and Britain. (Spain went the opposite way, but I think that's more complicated than the bombing itself.) Maybe if Canada were attacked, Canadians might want to engage the fight, and the Americans would have their will to fight reinforced. And other countries, out of fear they might be next, will join the fray. Maybe it's the terrorists who are playing the "flypaper" game. It's a theory worth considering. And if you follow along with that, we are in a dangerous time. Now that there's is serious political talk in the U.S. about timetables and re-deployments, this might be the time for terrorists to strike again and get everybody back in attack mode.

That's my bit of outside-the-box thinking for a Wednesday night. Or it's some kind of rationalization for Montreal being a terrorist target. Maybe it's because the bagels are too decadent. If only they could blow up the Olympic Stadium instead of the Metro.