Claire Berlinski Won't Be Leaving France

Seems like she gets more pissed off by the day.

At Richochet, "An Update From Paris: This Jew is Still Here, and She is Not Leaving":

I am Jewish. I am in France. And I am not leaving–not because of a handful of terrorist swine, and not even if there’s an army of them. This family of Jews will not be driven out of Europe twice. And as far as I’m concerned, the response a Jew should have to this outrage is the one we should have had before–when up against a far more fearsome enemy. We may die, but we’ll die fighting, and you’ll be amazed how many of you we take down with us.

So let me speak personally now to anyone who thinks he’ll get me out of here: We will always have Paris. I will always have Paris. As will all the people who belong here. You, however, will die.

RTWT.

Paris Attacks Target Democracy and the West — #CharlieHebdo

At Der Spiegel, where the editors aren't afraid of publishing the Muhammad cartoons.

See, "Assaulting Democracy: The Deep Repercussions of the Charlie Hebdo Attack":

The terrorists in Wednesday's attack on Charlie Hebdo in Paris had a much broader target in mind: Western values. Will the attacks bring people together in this time of crisis or will fear of Islam prevail?

*****

"Can we laugh about anything? Will we be able to laugh about anything tomorrow? These questions are worth asking. No limits to humor that is in the service of freedom of speech, because when humor stops, it is very often to make place for censorship or self censorship."

Cabu (Jan. 13, 1938 to Jan. 7, 2015), -- cartoonist at Charlie Hebdo

They knew what they were doing. The two masked men armed with Kalashnikovs ordered cartoonist Corinne Rey, who had just picked up her daughter from day care, to enter the door code. They then made their way to the second floor where, every Wednesday, the day of publication, the editorial staff of Charlie Hebdo gathered at noon to commence their weekly editorial meeting and discuss what they would put in the next issue.

t was a lively session, with around 15 people, including a police officer assigned to provide protection to Stéphane Charbonnier, the satirical magazine's 47-year-old editor in chief. In the end, neither stood a chance.

"Where is Charb?" the killers called out. "Where is Charb?" They shot him as soon as they found him. "I would rather die standing than live on my knees," Charb had once been quoted as saying. At the time, al-Qaida had just placed him on its death list in its online magazine Inspire. "Charb Doesn't Like People" was the name of a regular column he wrote for Charlie Hebdo, but he was in fact a quiet, reserved man who, like everyone here, stood for humanity as he saw it. They were people who fought for the freedom of the press, freedom of expression and, yes, for the right to occasionally trangress taste or to insult. In the end, they paid for it with their lives.

They were people like Cabu, whose real name was Jean Cabut. The 76-year-old with shaggy hair and a rough drawing style had a laugh so hearty it could literally lift him out of his chair. His most famous character was "Grande Duduche," a perpetual college student hopelessly in love with the daughter of a university dean.

Or Georges Wolinski, 80, who, like Cabu and the entire first generation at Charlie Hebdo, was a figure cast in the spiritual mold of the 1960s -- hedonistic, libertarian, anarchic and cheerful -- a man who opposed censorship, racism, the war in Algeria, de Gaulle and narrow-minded and dull Catholic France.

Or Bernard Verlhac, 57, who called himself Tignous and once caricatured Front National leader Marine Le Pen featuring a clown nose with a swastika branded on it. He once went out of his way to mock Nicolas Sarkozy as a war president and a man who is positively spastic when it came to power and hyperactive to the point of hysteria.

Or illustrator Philippe Honoré, 73, whose last cartoon was a New Year's card to Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi (wishing him "especially good health") that had been tweeted by the staff just minutes before the attack.

The hail of deadly bullets also struck left-wing economist Bernard Maris, 68, who wrote a regular column for the magazine, psychoanalyst and columnist Elsa Cayat, copy editor Mustapha Ourrad, police officers Franck Brinsolaro and Ahmed Merabet, a building maintenance man as well as local politician Michel Renaud, who had been paying a visit to the magazine....

Global Shock

The shock over the killings spread quickly across France as people registered that the attacks had in fact been also been aimed at France and democracy as a whole and not just some satirical magazine.

Judging from the outpouring of grief seen in France on Wednesday night, even an attack on the Louvre wouldn't have struck a deeper nerve. Jan. 7, 2015 has become for the French what 9/11 was to the United States. It was an attack on the country's proud history of Enlightenment and the French Revolution, but also one against Europe. It goes far beyond the publication itself -- at issue are fundamental questions of freedom and humanity. Accordingly, politicians, journalists and everyday people around the world sought to express their solidarity. It happened en masse on social networks, but also in public spaces. Hundreds of thousands of people attended vigils in cities spanning the globe from New York to Sydney on Wednesday, with further demonstrations planned for this weekend. Newspapers dedicated their front pages to the tragedy, although not all dared to publish the cartoons featured in Charlie Hebdo. A number of cartoonists also drew images illustrating the inequality of weapons and pens. The pope prayed for the dead.

From Pakistan to Turkey, Muslim dignitaries took pains to distance themselves, using tough words to condemn the attacks. Tunisia's Islamist al-Nahda party issued a statement condemning the "cowardly and criminal act." Egypt's spiritual leader also sent his condolences, as did Russia and China.

A Turning Point

France is no stranger to terrorism, but Wednesday's attack marked the worst it had seen since 1961. The country survived the Organization of the Secret Army (OAS), a French dissident paramilitary group that fought against Algeria's independence during the 1960s. Later, during the 1990s, Algerian Islamists planted bombs in commuter trains. But the attack that took place on Wednesday against Charlie Hebdo was a siege against the very values that France embodies.

"This is a turning point -- quantitatively but for that reason also qualitatively," says Olivier Roy, a respected scholar of Islam at the European University Institute in Florence. "It was an attack designed for the maximum effect," he says. "They did it to shock the public and, in that sense, they were also successful."

At the same time, at least for a short period, the attackers united a country that in recent years had appeared to be frightened, beat down and hopeless in a way rarely seen before in its history. The day after the attacks, President Hollande even met with his political nemesis, Nicolas Sarkozy, in Elysée Palace. "This isn't just about democracy," the former president said. "It's about civilization."

Hollande also invited right-wing populist Marine Le Pen, a woman considered to be an outsider in the French political system who normally wouldn't get invited to the presidential palace. Meanwhile, leftist Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve visited the editorial staff of the conservative daily Le Figaro on the day of the attacks. It may not sound like much, but these are meaningful gestures in today's politically polarized France...

Still a lot more, at the link.

The Next Islamist Rampage

At the Wall Street Journal, "The West has to reinforce its terror defenses, including surveillance":

France’s terror rampage ended Friday as police killed three Islamists, but not before they had paralyzed much of the country, taken more hostages, and killed at least four more innocents. Europe and the U.S. had better brace for more such attacks, while reinforcing the antiterror defenses, moral and military, that have come under political assault in recent years.

***
The biggest question raised by Paris is whether it presages a new offensive by homegrown jihadists carrying European or U.S. passports who are inspired by al Qaeda or Islamic State. Officials say one of the killers was trained by the al Qaeda offshoot in Yemen, and we can expect other such links or sympathies.

It’s tempting but probably wrong to think that France has a unique jihadist problem because of its relatively large Muslim population (about 7.5% of the country) and the immigrant ghettoes where they congregate. These certainly are breeding grounds for radicalism. Yet the United Kingdom has Birmingham, the Islamist petri dish for the London subway bombers, and the U.S. sheltered the killer Tsarnaevs in Boston and the Somali immigrants in Minnesota who’ve gone to Syria.

America may have a better historical record of assimilating diverse peoples, but that was when the U.S. had a less fragmented national culture and an elite that was more confident in Western values. The Internet, for all its benefits, also makes it possible for young men in the West to be inspired or recruited by jihadist networks around the world.

The threat is compounded by America’s abdication in the Syrian civil war, which has become a Grand Central Station for global jihad. Thousands from the Muslim diaspora have flooded into Syria as they did in Iraq after the fall of Saddam Hussein. The difference is that in Iraq they were killed by the U.S.-Iraq counter-insurgency campaign.

In Syria they have had four years to develop safe havens and training camps. Hundreds of Europeans and Americans have joined the ranks of al-Nusrah, the al Qaeda branch in Syria, or Islamic State, which controls territory from Aleppo in Western Syria through the suburbs of Baghdad.

“A group of core al Qaeda terrorists in Syria is planning mass casualty attacks against the West,” said Andrew Parker, the director general of British security service MI5, in a speech Thursday. His timing was no accident. Mr. Parker said some 600 British citizens have traveled to Syria, many joining Islamic State. “We face a very serious level of threat that is complex to combat and unlikely to abate significantly for some time.”

How to respond? One necessity is to accelerate and intensify the campaign against Islamic State and its 30,000 recruits. Jihad is more attractive when it is succeeding, and Islamic State has infused militant Islam with a new charisma. All the more so after President Obama announced a campaign to destroy it, began bombing, and then—very little. The desultory offensive so far may be winning more recruits for Islamic State than it is inflicting casualties.

The West also needs to cease its political campaign against the most effective antiterror tools. This means surveillance in particular. The same left-libertarian media who have canonized Edward Snowden and Glenn Greenwald now claim solidarity with Charlie Hebdo. Sorry. You cannot favor antiterror disarmament and then claim shock at terror successes.

“My sharpest concern as director general of MI5 is the growing gap between the increasingly challenging threat and the decreasing availability of capabilities to address it,” Mr. Parker, the British security chief, also said this week. “The dark places from where those who wish us harm can plot and plan are increasing” and “we need to be able to access communications and obtain relevant data on those people when we have good reason.”

Surveillance by itself isn’t enough, given the many reports that French security had tracked this week’s killers. We’ll learn in the coming days if the French missed clues that the Kouachi brothers were ready to strike, but other countries have had similar oversights. The FBI was tipped off that Tamerlan Tsarnaev had visited the North Caucusus terrorist hotbed of Dagestan in 2012 but failed to act.

The West will have to consider more aggressive interventions, including arrest or exile, for citizens who visit terror regions and show signs of embracing jihad. Tracking Muslim student groups and clerics is also essential to preventing future attacks. The Associated Press campaign three years ago against the New York police for legal monitoring of Muslim groups looks more morally obtuse with each homegrown attack.

Oops. I suspect the WSJ's editors are a bit too lucid for the global leftist Islamo-coddlers.

And I just love that line on Assange and Greenwald: "Sorry. You cannot favor antiterror disarmament and then claim shock at terror successes." Indeed you cannot. And it means that the global left bears partial responsibility for the Paris attacks.

Still more at the link.

Kam Chancellor's Interception Makes It a Breeze for Seattle

A really good game, and yes, that interception was a real heap of icing on the cake.

At LAT, "Seahawks return to NFC championship after cruising past Carolina, 31-17":

It was a brief encounter when Cam met Kam, sort of a hello-and-goodbye affair.

Carolina's Cam Newton threw the pass, Seattle safety Kam Chancellor picked it out of the chilly air and ran it back for a 90-yard interception.

“Kam Chancellor,” teammate Richard Sherman said, “damages people's souls.”

And Saturday, the 232-pound sledgehammer crushed the Panthers, putting an exclamation point on Seattle's 31-17 victory in a divisional playoff game at CenturyLink Field.

The Seahawks are one step closer to becoming the first NFL team in a decade to repeat as Super Bowl champions. They will play host to the winner of Sunday's game between Dallas and Green Bay for the right to represent the NFC in the league's marquee game Feb. 1 in Glendale, Ariz.

The Seahawks played both Green Bay and Dallas at home this season, beating the Packers in the Kickoff Opener, 36-16, and losing to the Cowboys, 30-23, in Week 6.

“It's going to be one of those for the ages, you look forward to that,” Seahawks quarterback Russell Wilson said. “And you definitely look forward to being at home, rather than one of those two places.”

More.

Judge Jeanine Responds to #ParisAttacks: 'We Need to Kill Them!' (VIDEO)

Stark warning from Judge Jeanine: "This political correctness will be the death of us..."

Well, it's not as though she hasn't been sounding the tocsin.

Watch:

Terrorist Sleeper Cells Activated in France (VIDEO)

Well, no surprise there.

At CNN, "Source: Terror cells activated in France."

The New Phase of Militant Islamic Terror and How to Respond (VIDEO)

I don't think she fully develops the "how to respond" part, but this is a good discussion.

Watch Judith Miller, at Fox News, "Paris is new phase in fight against Jihadists."

Stop Pretending Terrorism Has Nothing to Do With Islam

A great piece, from David Harsanyi, at the Federalist.

Anti-Torture Protesters Arrested in Front of Dick Cheney's Home

Priorities.

At the Hill:

Police arrested two anti-torture protesters in front of former Vice President Dick Cheney’s home in McLean, Va. on Saturday.

About 20 protesters from the anti-war group Code Pink, some wearing orange prison in jumpsuits, walked onto Cheney’s property to mark the 14th anniversary of the opening of the Guantanamo Bay prison in Cuba, Reuters reported.

Police asked the group of protesters to leave and all obliged except for two members of the group, who were then arrested on trespassing charges.

Code Pink said Tighe Barry, 57, and Eve Tetaz, 83, were unfairly singled out for arrest.

Tighe Barry of @codepink arrested outside of Dick Cheneys house! Police won't say why! 83 y/o woman arrested too!! pic.twitter.com/y22QZmaCTC

— CODEPINK (@codepink) January 10, 2015

Arson Attack at Hamburg Morgenpost for Publishing #CharlieHebdo Cartoons

It begins.

At London's Daily Mail, "BREAKING NEWS: Arsonists attack office of German newspaper that printed Charlie Hebdo cartoons."

Stop Lying: Media Are Censoring Charlie Hebdo Out of Fear of Islam

"It’s time to cut the B.S."

Argues Mollie Hemingway, at the Federalist:

It’s time to stop lying about why many in the media don’t publish these cartoons. It’s not out of respect for religion, something the media could actually use a great deal more of.

It’s not about causing offense to many, or papers wouldn’t be running photos on the front page of gay couples making out or announcements of same-sex unions or what not. I don’t recall the New York Times discussing deference to pious families in Brooklyn when those began in 2002.

There’s one reason and one reason only why we’re not seeing any pictures of Muhammad (and contrary to what many in the media mindlessly tell you, depicting Muhammad is a debated issue among Muslims).

Journalists are absolutely terrified of Islamic extremists...

RTWT.

#ParisAttacks: Girlfriend Hayat Boumeddiene Likely in Syria

At the Wall Street Journal, "Partner of Paris Gunman Believed to Be in Syria: Hayat Boumeddiene Is Believed to Have Left France on Jan. 2":

PARIS—French authorities believe Hayat Boumeddiene, the girlfriend of the gunman who was killed during a police raid at a kosher store on Friday, left France Jan. 2 and has reached Syria, people familiar with the matter said Saturday.

Police have been hunting for Ms. Boumeddiene since her partner, Amedy Coulibaly, was identified as the alleged shooter of a policewoman on Thursday and stormed a Parisian kosher grocery on Friday, leaving four hostages dead.

French prosecutors have described Ms. Boumeddiene as a dangerous individual who has trained to use firearms.

Ms. Boumeddiene left France and crossed into Syria from Turkey, the people said, before the French capital was plunged into a three-day spree of violence that began with the attack on the Charlie Hebdo magazine Wednesday.

A senior Turkish official said Ms. Boumeddiene flew to Turkey with one companion on Jan. 2, landing at Istanbul’s Sabiha Gokcen airport. The official would not name her travel companion but said Turkish intelligence officials were in constant contact with their French counterparts.

The pair stayed in Istanbul until Jan. 4, when they flew to the southeastern city of Urfa, and most likely headed to Syria, the official said.

“After Urfa, we lost track of them... most likely they crossed into Syria,” the official said.

“She used no ports or no vehicles to exit turkey that we know of,” he added.

The city of Urfa is known as a way station for foreigners seeking to reach the Syrian battlefield...

More.

I Am Not Charlie Hebdo

Here's a "not Charlie Hedbo" to which I can relate.

From David Brooks, at the New York Times:

The journalists at Charlie Hebdo are now rightly being celebrated as martyrs on behalf of freedom of expression, but let’s face it: If they had tried to publish their satirical newspaper on any American university campus over the last two decades it wouldn’t have lasted 30 seconds. Student and faculty groups would have accused them of hate speech. The administration would have cut financing and shut them down.

Public reaction to the attack in Paris has revealed that there are a lot of people who are quick to lionize those who offend the views of Islamist terrorists in France but who are a lot less tolerant toward those who offend their own views at home.

Just look at all the people who have overreacted to campus micro-aggressions. The University of Illinois fired a professor who taught the Roman Catholic view on homosexuality. The University of Kansas suspended a professor for writing a harsh tweet against the N.R.A. Vanderbilt University derecognized a Christian group that insisted that it be led by Christians.

Americans may laud Charlie Hebdo for being brave enough to publish cartoons ridiculing the Prophet Muhammad, but, if Ayaan Hirsi Ali is invited to campus, there are often calls to deny her a podium...

Keep reading.

Leaked Newsroom Emails Reveal Al Jazeera Fury Over Global Support for #CharlieHebdo

Yeah, lots of Muslims around the world are showing solidarity with the terrorists.

See Blazing Cat Fur on Al Jazeera, "'I AM NOT CHARLIE'."

Plus, see the Los Angeles Times, "Muslim leaders condemn French massacre, but on the street, disagreement."

Undetected French Hostages Hid in Kosher Store's Freezer, Scared of Freezing to Death Before Police Could Kill Terrorist

Harrowing.

Something that they'll never forget, and thank God they didn't die from the cold.

At WaPo, "In a kosher grocery store in Paris, terror takes a deadly toll":

PARIS – For more than four hours, Noemi shivered through the biting chill and the abject terror of being hidden away inside the refrigerated cellar of a kosher grocery store as a murderous gunman rampaged above.

The cold-storage room had been her salvation when she dashed inside Friday afternoon, escaping the bullets that felled others. But as night fell, she huddled with fellow hostages and worried that it would become her death chamber.

“We’re very afraid, and we’re very cold,” Noemi told a friend, 29-year-old Anthony Ravaux, in a phone call just after 5 p.m. “Tell the police to hurry.”

Minutes later, right at sundown, dozens of heavily armed officers stormed the store in a furious assault of smoke, sound and fire. The hostages made a desperate run for the doors as officers shot the gunman dead, ending the standoff....

The hostage-taking began just after noon, when Amedy Coulibaly, 32, a French citizen of Senegalese descent, walked into the store and began to shoot. The attack played out hours before the start of the Jewish Sabbath on Friday night, a particularly busy time for a kosher shop.

As police quickly established a cordon around the building, residents on the outside were left to wonder what had become of friends and colleagues trapped within.

Two women who worked at the store but were off at the time of the attack sobbed as they frantically dialed the phone numbers of friends. One said she had received a call from a colleague who could only get out the words “people are shooting” before the line was cut.

“They were only targeted because they were Jewish,” the woman, who declined to give her name, said of her colleagues. “They’re just normal people trying to do their jobs.”...

There were 16 hostages, including children, Coulibaly told the station. He boasted that he had already killed four people, and police said he was threatening to shoot more if they staged a raid against his accomplices in Dammartin.

In fact, Coulibaly had significantly more hostages than he knew: the ones who had dashed into the cold-storage room had apparently escaped his detection.

But Noemi and the others huddled inside had no way of knowing that. They felt a jolt of apprehension with every sound from above, and they scoured the storage-room floor for empty boxes and other possible places to hide.

“Don’t panic,” Ravaux told Noemi, whose last name he did not want to reveal, when she reached him by phone. “The police will do their best.”

Ravaux, who had walked out of the store five minutes before Coulibaly burst in, told her to conserve her phone’s battery, and the two hung up.

Within minutes, the streets echoed with three loud booms as police tossed stun grenades and began their assault. After a pause, the earth shook with 30 seconds of sustained gunfire. Blocks away, parents shepherded screaming children into the shelter of nearby doorways.

And then, silence.

More than an hour after the raid, Ravaux said he believed that his friend had survived. But he could not reach her by phone.

“I hope she’s with the police,” he said.

Officials said that the Paris raid and a nearly simultaneous shootout with the Kouachi brothers in Dammartin left all three assailants dead, allowing the surviving hostages to go free. In his speech to the nation, Hollande praised law enforcement officers for their work and said France would not be divided by racism or anti-Semitism.

But on the streets of Porte de Vincennes, residents expressed a gnawing fear that the events of the past three days had unleashed a wave of violence with no end.

“This is only the beginning for what’s awaiting France,” said Sam Cohen, a 22-year-old who wore a black hoodie atop his black kippah. “Everyone’s going to grab a weapon, and there will be more and more dead every day.”

French Prime Minister Manuel Valls Declares 'War' on Radical Islam

Well, thank goodness somebody over there's declaring war on radical jihad.

At NYT, "French Premier Declares ‘War’ on Radical Islam as Paris Girds for Rally" (via Memeorandum):

PARIS — Prime Minister Manuel Valls declared Saturday that France was at war with radical Islam after the harrowing sieges that led to the deaths of three gunmen and four hostages the day before. New details emerged about the bloody final confrontations, and security forces remained on high alert.

“It is a war against terrorism, against jihadism, against radical Islam, against everything that is aimed at breaking fraternity, freedom, solidarity,” Mr. Valls said during a speech in Évry, south of Paris.

The authorities started the day hunting for the companion of one of the killers, only to learn later that she appeared to have fled to Turkey and then probably to Syria days before the first assault in Paris on Wednesday. The police had suspected that the woman — Hayat Boumeddiene, 26, the girlfriend of Amedy Coulibaly, believed to be one of the gunmen — might have played a role in one or more of the attacks.

“We are 99 percent sure that she traveled to Syria from Urfa,” said a Turkish intelligence official, referring to a city in southern Turkey. “There is no evidence that suggests she was involved in the terrorist attacks in France this week.”

France remained on edge a day after security forces killed Mr. Coulibaly, who the police said was responsible for the deaths of four hostages at a kosher supermarket near the Porte de Vincennes in eastern Paris on Friday, and Saïd and Chérif Kouachi, the brothers who fatally shot 12 people on Wednesday in and around the offices of Charlie Hebdo, a satirical newspaper.

The French government said it would put 500 additional troops on the streets over the weekend amid preparations for a giant unity rally in Paris on Sunday. A number of European officials said they would attend, including Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu of Turkey, the most prominent Muslim leader scheduled to be there, and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel.

On Saturday, hundreds of thousands of people marched in Paris, Toulouse, Nice and other cities in a show of solidarity, and rallies were held in places as far away as Madagascar and Bangui, Central African Republic.

Top ministers in the French government held an emergency session to discuss measures to prevent a repeat of the attacks, which shocked the country and raised questions about why law enforcement agencies had failed to thwart terrorism suspects well known to the police and intelligence services.

Some of the surviving hostages shared chilling accounts of their ordeals at the hands of heavily armed captors, who they said had seemed prepared to die as police forces amassed outside the kosher supermarket and a printing plant northeast of Paris that the Kouachi brothers had seized early Friday.

Mr. Coulibaly, in an interview with a French television outlet not long before he was killed, claimed to be affiliated with the Islamic State, which has its headquarters in northern Syria. Officials identified him as the gunman in the fatal shooting of a female police officer in a Paris suburb on Thursday.

The crisis and its aftermath presented a major challenge to President François Hollande and his government, which are facing deep religious and cultural rifts in a nation with a rapidly growing Muslim population while simultaneously coping with the security threats stemming from Islamic extremists. Large numbers of French citizens have been traveling to Syria and Iraq to fight with the Islamic State, also known as ISIS.

Mr. Hollande, appealing for unity, has warned against seeing Muslims as the enemy, and Mr. Valls called again on Saturday for citizens to join the rally planned for Sunday.

“There needs to be a firm message about the values of the republic and of secularism,” Mr. Valls said in Évry. “Tomorrow, France and the French can be proud. Everyone must come tomorrow.”...

I think they need to figure out how they're going to deal with Islam. It's not "radical" Islam. It's Islam. Smiting the infidels is in the Koran. Get that and they might be going somewhere.

More at the link.

French Intelligence Dropped Surveillance of Kouachi Brothers for 'Lack of Resources'

Hmm...

A "lack of resources," eh?

I'm sure a lot of Frenchmen are thinking perhaps some of Hollande's high-tax revenues should have been put to counterterrorism.

At WSJ, "Overburdened French Dropped Surveillance of Brothers: Intelligence Services Had Brothers Under Watch After Yemen Trip But Lacked Resources to Continue":

The terror attacks in Paris that have killed 17 people in three days this week represent one of the worst fears—and failures—of counterterrorist officials: a successful plot coordinated by people who had once been under surveillance but who were later dropped as a top priority.

The U.S. provided France with intelligence showing that the gunmen in the Charlie Hebdo massacre received training in Yemen in 2011, prompting French authorities to begin monitoring the two brothers, according to U.S. officials.

But that surveillance of Said and Chérif Kouachi came to an end last spring, U.S. officials said, after several years of monitoring turned up nothing suspicious.

“These guys were laying low for an extended period of time so they could pull off something,” said a U.S. official.

The brothers fell through the surveillance net because of a lack of resources, current and former French officials said.

“We have to make choices,” said Christian Prouteau, the founder and former head of the GIGN, an elite counterterrorism force that reports to the French Defense Ministry. “It’s the people coming from Syria that worried us.”

France boasts vast intelligence-gathering operations, which excel at recruiting operatives across North Africa and the Middle East. The tentacles of French intelligence also reach deep into the impoverished suburbs of French cities home to Europe’s biggest Muslim population.

But for Yemen, France relies on partner spy agencies, particularly those of the U.S., Britain, Saudi Arabia, and Yemen, to collect and pass on on-the-ground intelligence.

That’s what Washington did after the Kouachis went to the Arab country notorious as an al Qaeda safe haven and as the home of al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, the affiliate with the best track record at launching sophisticated and aggressive terror plots against Western targets.

American spies told the French that both brothers, 34-year-old Said and 32-year-old Chérif, had traveled to Yemen in 2011 to receive weapons training from AQAP.

French officials had already been aware of Chérif’s terror connections. He had served a terrorism sentence in France in 2008, and French law enforcement had suspected him in an additional terrorist-related incident in 2011 but never charged him. It is unclear whether Said had a profile with French law enforcement before traveling to Yemen.

When the two returned to France, U.S. and French officials said, French intelligence eventually ran out of resources to keep their eye on them.

By 2013, France was struggling to monitor a flood of citizens suspected of traveling—or planning to travel—to Syria and Iraq. That number has now surpassed 1,000, officials said.

Additionally, much of the French reconnaissance drone fleet was ordered to North Africa, where French troops are helping to fight Islamist insurgencies in Mali and other countries.

Meanwhile, the Kouachis had gone quiet, raising no red flags, these officials said.

“You can’t monitor everything with the same quality and that’s why we exchange information,” said a French official. The U.S., in turn, relies heavily on France for intelligence from Francophone countries in Africa, the official said.

Western intelligence officials said the sheer number of French nationals under surveillance for possible ties with terrorist groups is making it harder for officials to determine who poses an authentic threat.

“One of the big problems with counterterrorism policy is that the haystack is getting bigger and bigger, and we still need to find that one needle,” said Benoit Gomis, a terrorism analyst with the London-based think tank Chatham House who formerly worked at the French Defense Ministry.

Part of the lessons learned in the aftermath of the attack depends on the intelligence estimate of whether AQAP inspired or more directly controlled the Paris terror attacks.

On a recruitment level, the Kouachis’ relationship with AQAP promises to bring a resurgence of acclaim among Islamic extremists for al Qaeda, which many Western terrorism analysts said has been scrambling to restore its image as the pre-eminent global jihadist organization in the midst of competition with Islamic State.

The group’s affiliation with the attacks, however, is also likely to stoke fears among Western intelligence agencies about the possibility of sleeper cells in other countries.

Jeez, let's face it. France is freakin' overwhelmed by the massive influx and outflow of Muslim jihadists. Things won't be getting better any time soon. No surprise, but Jews will be hightailing it out of France faster than you can say Kristallnacht.

Still more.

#ParisAttacks: Saïd and Chérif Kouachi 'Networked' with Amedy Coulibaly in Jihadist Group from 19th Arrondissement

From Pamela Geller, at Atlas Shrugs, "Paris Jihad: Muslims in Hebdo Slaughter and Kosher Store Killings Met in Paris."

They were born in Paris. Spoke fluent French, their native language. Trained in Yemen. Followed and were inspired and financed by American imam Anwar Awlaki.

They would meet in Buttes-Chaumont Park (photo above). They named their Muslim military group after the park.

The global jihad — nationality, borders, geography, affluence, education, sock color are irrelevant. It’s one thing and one thing only. Islam...

Enemies right in the midst.

Keep reading.

Oh, and it remains to be seen if much will change in France. Don't hold your breath. Remember, the ruling Socialist Party is intent not to, ahem, "inflame" Islamic sensibilities. Here: "French President François Hollande Says #CharlieHebdo Attacks 'Have Nothing to Do With Muslim Religion...'"

How the PC Police Threaten Free Speech

From Nick Gillespie, at the Daily Beast.

#ParisAttacks: Unedited Video Shows French Police Storming Kosher Market, Killing Terrorist Amedy Coulibaly in Hail of Gunfire

Here's the report at London's Daily Mail, "Four kosher deli hostages were killed BEFORE French police went in - as dramatic new video shows the moment SWAT team gunned down terrorist in a storm of bullets as he made his suicidal charge.

Watch the unedited video of the siege at Live Leak, "UNCENSORED Paris Police raid against islamist terrorist at Porte de Vincennes."



PREVIOUSLY: "Deadly Raids End Terror Spree in #ParisAttacks."