Northern Virginiastan

Baileys Crossroads, Va., is teeming with Islamic radicals just as hostile to the U.S. government as their counterparts in London.

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Homeland Security: Authorities across the pond now fear that even more Muslims - possibly numbering in the thousands - are plotting terror. On this end, however, U.S. officials still can't see anything in the pipeline.

Either the British have better intelligence than we do, or we don't have any radicalized Muslim communities here in America. Sanguine U.S. authorities are guessing the latter.

Responding to new alarms raised by the Brits, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff says not to worry, the threat inside America is less severe. He maintains that this country doesn't have the kind of "pockets" of concentrated radicals seen in Britain, where terrorists can find support and plot with virtual impunity.

Chertoff must not get out much.

Right across the Potomac from his office is the second-highest concentration of Muslims in the country. Baileys Crossroads, Va., is teeming with Islamic radicals just as hostile to the U.S. government as their counterparts in London.

Baileys Crossroads is the heart of the Wahhabi corridor, which includes the safe houses where the hijackers stayed and the mosque where they and dozens of other terrorists have worshipped.

Another area mosque preached to members of the Virginia Jihad Network, who plotted to kill American soldiers after 9/11 and praised the space shuttle Columbia disaster as a "good omen" for Islam.

The area also includes two luxury apartment high-rises that erupted into cheers when the World Trade Center fell on 9/11. Law enforcement has dubbed them the "Taliban Towers." Investigators routinely find posters and computer screen savers celebrating Osama bin Laden as a hero.

Down the street is a Saudi charitable front for al-Qaida once run by bin Laden's nephew. The U.S. branch of the dangerous Muslim Brotherhood is in the same office park. Farther down in Alexandria is the Saudi madrassa that's graduated several terrorists, including the al-Qaida operative who plotted to assassinate President Bush.

Agents on the ground working the inordinate number of terror cases in the area say it's no less than the base of operations for the bad guys in America - and it's right in Chertoff's backyard.

Despite raid after raid, however, none of the entities along the Wahhabi corridor has been shut down. Thanks to institutionalized political correctness and Saudi Embassy complaints, the terror-supporting infrastructure has not been dismantled.

The Brits turned a blind eye to radicalism in their backyard, but no more. They're finally cracking down.

We haven't learned our lesson for some odd reason. To suddenly decree this side of the pond a radical-free zone after what happened here just over five years ago is fatuous.

The hijackers didn't operate in isolation, like visitors from outer space. They were secreted inside the Muslim community for well over a year, and got substantial aid and comfort from dozens of facilitators at no less than seven mosques from coast to coast. Some knew the evil they planned and helped them anyway.

Assimilation? Hardly. In Baileys Crossroads, skinned goats are delivered daily to several halal butcher shops located in shopping centers where all the signs are in Arabic. Women shop in head-to-toe black abayas.

You'd never know this is a suburb of the nation's capital. Concerned longtime residents have seen it turn into "Northern Virginiastan."

The pundits who mouth pleasant platitudes about American Muslims being more "integrated" have never spent much time in Northern Virginia, or for that matter, in Bridgeview, Ill.; or Jersey City, N.J.; or Dearborn, Mich., where residents are routinely subjected to rallies and marches for Hezbollah and other terror groups, along with calls to pray blasted over mosque loudspeakers five times a day.

These places look and sound more like little Cairos than any American city, and they provide perfect cover for Muslim terrorists and their supporters.

Terror experts say there are hundreds if not thousands of potential suicide bombers already established inside the Muslim communities in America. They need to be ferreted out.