SYDNEY -- A test on how well Australians can cope with an increasingly expected Islamic terrorist attack showed last week how little we have learned from New York, Bali and Madrid.
A bus in Melbourne carrying 30 "people" was easily blown up, and off Darwin an oil rig was "destroyed" by five "terrorists." As Prime Minister John Howard is warning, we are slow to prepare. And slow to be told the full truth.
Only now, for example, are Canberra intelligence sources catching up with the Willie Brigitte case. Brigitte, a French terror suspect with links to the New York and Madrid bombers, enjoyed the sights of Sydney for five months before Paris pressured Canberra to deport him. While here he persuaded an Australian woman, a soldier, to marry him in a Sydney mosque.