The Enemy Within

Here's a chilling piece of news from the London Times:

In a meeting last month with some families of victims of the July 7 attacks, John Reid, the Home Secretary, stunned his audience by telling them that 20 "major conspiracies" had been uncovered.

This was far more than anyone in Whitehall had previously divulged. Understandably, Mr Reid did not go into details but his claim came shortly after MI5 suggested that there were as many as 1,200 terrorist suspects living in Britain.

A report  by the Joint Intelligence Committee  leaked to a Sunday newspaper last month said that the war in Iraq  had made Britain a target for al-Qaeda sympathisers "for many years to come".

This report showed the remarkable rise in suspects that MI5 was attempting to shadow. At the time of the 9/11 attacks, MI5 knew of about 250 "primary investigative targets" inside Britain. By July 7 last year that had risen to 800. Today it is more than 1,000. Sir Ian Blair, the Metropolitan Police Commissioner, had revealed how three attacks had been foiled since July 7 that were likely to have caused many more deaths than the 52 killed in last summer's suicide bombings ...

Today's terrorists are suburban men who neighbours invariably describe as "hard-working, respectable and British to the core".

Evil to the core is closer to the mark.