That is a question one has to ask as a result of reading this report.

The next terrorist assault on the United States is likely to come through relatively unsophisticated, near-simultaneous attacks -- similar to those attempted in Britain over the weekend -- designed more to provoke widespread fear and panic than to cause major losses of life, U.S. intelligence and counterterrorism officials believe.

Such attacks require minimal expertise and training and are difficult to prevent. Although British investigators have not claimed al-Qaeda involvement in the latest incidents, officials here said they may constitute a "hybrid" phenomenon, in which al-Qaeda inspires and guides local groups from afar but establishes no visible operational or logistical links.

The connection, several officials said, is made through a growing network of al-Qaeda intermediaries and affiliates who are far removed from the organization's leadership.

"What is a direct link?" asked one counterterrorism official. "Is it couriers? Messengers?" U.S. officials "from very senior folks" on down, he said, are watching as the British work to reconstruct the attacks and trace their origin.

And if we start seeing attacks modeled on this one, emanating from the Muslim community without direct links to al-Qaeda, then that will raise a much more serious question -- how do we stop these attacks? And perhaps just as pressing, how do we treat a community that will have become a metastasized cancer in our midst?