Yet again, fiction seems to have a way of foreshadowing reality. Canadian authorities over the weekend arrested 17 people whom they allege are part of a radical Islamic terror cell planning major attacks throughout the U.S. and Canada.

Consider, then, this excerpt from the hardcover edition of my 2003 political thriller, THE LAST DAYS (p.156-157):

The Copper Scroll	Contributor Joel Rosenberg Joel C. Rosenberg is the New York Times best-selling author of THE LAST JIHAD (2002), THE LAST DAYS (2003), and THE EZEKIEL OPTION (2005), with more than one million copies in print. He previously served as a senior advisor to several U.S. and Israeli leaders, including Steve Forbes, Rush Limbaugh, former Israeli Deputy Prime Minister Natan Sharansky, and former Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. He has been interviewed on more than 300 radio and TV shows, including ABC's "Nightline," CBN's 700 Club, CNN Headline News, Fox News Channel, MSNBC, the Michael Reagan Show, the Rush Limbaugh Show and the Sean Hannity Show.. Website - [go to Rosenberg Index]
The Ezekiel Option
The Last Days
The Last Jihad
Epicenter

"Daoud Juma...checked his watch. It was just before midnight back in Baghdad, not yet four in the afternoon in New York and Washington. He tried to picture what he and his men would be doing twenty-four hours later. Would they have been able to reach Canada yet? Would they have already slipped across the border into the United States? Would the cars be ready? What about the weapons?....Non of these Al-Nakbah shock troops had ever been outside of their home countries of iran, Saudi Arabia, or Palestine, other than the last eighteen months they'd spent in Iraq, training night and day at Salman Pak, just outside of Baghdad....Each was trained either as a sniper or a suicide bomber. And each was ready to give his very life to wage jihad in the belly of the Great Satan....

"Once safely across the Canadian border into the United States, and once convinced they weren't being tracked, they'd rendezvous at the cabin, set up their shortwave radios, and gather any last-minute intelligence they could about homeland security preparations underway in their target cities....It wouldn't be difficult to find a highly populated and highly vulnerable strike point. Beyond obvious points of entry, U.S. homeland security was a joke. Thousands of miles of borders were Swiss cheese, and once inside the country most sites that attracted crowds -- aside from government buildings and major sporting events -- had minimal if any security....Americans had never experienced a wave of suicide bombings and sniper attacks on the order Daoud's Palestinian brethren were inflicting on the Israelis. Because they'd never seen it happen, they never really believed that it could happen. But they would soon learn. Now Daoud would teach the Great Satan a lesson it would never forget."

New reports suggest the U.S. is now intensifying efforts to beef up our border with Canada. It's about time. There has been so much focus on our border issues with Mexico, and rightly so. But we are also incredibly vulnerable from the north. Our border with Canada is "Swiss cheese." It was true three years ago. It's still true today. I wish that was fiction. But it isn't. Much more needs to be done -- and soon. CRO