French Officials Trying to Determine If Abdelhamid Abaaoud Died in Saint-Denis Raid (VIDEO)

The Telegraph UK has this breathtaking headline right now, "Paris attacks: Terrorist mastermind Abdelhamid Abaaoud 'killed' in French police raid, reports claim • Prosecutor reveals incredible details of siege."

But the Wall Street Journal's circumspect, "French Trying to Determine If Mastermind of Paris Attacks Was Killed in Raid":

PARIS—French police were working to establish late Wednesday whether the presumed mastermind of the Paris terror attacks was among the dead after police rained more than 5,000 rounds of ammunition on a suspected safe house in an assault that lasted several hours.

At least two people were killed and eight others detained after a raid that turned the gritty northern Paris suburb of Saint-Denis into a heavy combat zone. The gunbattle—in which more than 100 police officers took part and one suspect, a woman, blew herself up with a suicide vest—was so fierce that the ceiling of the besieged apartment collapsed.

The operation was launched following a tip that a Belgian-born Islamic State operative Abdelhamid Abaaoud, suspected of being the architect of Friday’s Paris killings and other terrorist plots in Europe, was in the apartment at the time. French officials said that Mr. Abaaoud had been planning subsequent attacks on targets such as Paris’s La Defense business district.

He wasn’t among those detained in Wednesday’s raid, officials said. It also wasn’t clear whether he was among the fatalities. Paris prosecutor François Molins said French authorities haven’t conclusively identified those killed in the assault and are still examining the bodies.

If his death is established, Mr. Abaaoud’s presence so close to the scene of the Paris attacks would deepen concerns about Europe’s security, and raise questions over how an Islamic State operative who featured prominently on Western military’s target lists slipped back through borders to sow terror in the heart of the Continent. Until recently, Western security officials had thought Mr. Abaaoud was in Syria.

Wednesday’s fighting began before dawn on the Rue du Corbillon, a narrow street in working-class Saint-Denis, which has a large Muslim population. “It was an extremely difficult operation,” Mr. Molins said.

Police acted on a tip they initially received late on Monday. It took the French security services a day to verify the information using telephone and banking records, Mr. Molins said.

At 4:20 a.m., police RAID and BRI special forces converged on a third-floor apartment. The assault team faced an immediate setback: The explosive charges that they placed at the apartment’s armored door didn’t immediately succeed in breaching it, giving the terrorists inside time to regroup and mount a fierce resistance.

“I first thought that maybe France had won the soccer game, and that it was firecrackers. Then I understood that something really bad was happening,” said Bibikoresha Lallmahamood, 43, who lives a few blocks away...

Still more.

Five Syrians with Stolen Passports Arrested in Honduras

Yes, because they no doubt were fleeing hardship and persecution.

At USA Today, "Report: U.S.-bound Syrians arrested in Honduras with fake passports":

Five Syrians trying to make their way to the United States using stolen Greek passports were arrested in Honduras, police there said Wednesday.

The men were arrested after they flew into the airport in the Honduran capital of Tegucigalpa late Tuesday night and were questioned by immigration officials, according to La Prensa. They were trying to make their way to northern Honduras to complete their journey to the U.S. by land, crossing Guatemala and Mexico to reach the southwest border of the U.S.

Aníbal Baca, a police spokesman, said the Hondurans were already on alert following the terrorist attack in Paris and were tipped off by Greek law enforcement about the men's voyage. Baca told the newspaper that Greek diplomats visited the airport and confirmed that none of the men spoke a word of Greek.

"The passports were stolen (in Greece), those are not their real names, we are confirming their identities," Baca told La Prensa...

Keep reading.

Attitudes on Syrian Refugees Change After #ParisAttacks

This is becoming the defining political issue right now, in both Europe and the U.S.

At WSJ, "Goodwill to Syrian Refugees Drains Away After Paris Attacks":

IZMIR, Turkey—Rising international concern over potential security threats posed by refugees from the Middle East has done little to deter thousands of people there from attempting the dangerous journey to Europe.

As the prime ministers of Turkey and Greece met Wednesday in Ankara to discuss ways to better tackle the migrant crisis, people were still making their way to the Turkish coast with their eyes set on sanctuary across the Aegean Sea.

The increasing hostility and suspicion that they now face in Europe in the wake of last week’s Paris attacks represent a striking reversal from the international sympathy generated for Syrian refugees after the drowning of a young boy on the Turkish coast in September.

For millions of Syrian refugees, the options appear to be constricting.

“We worry that these attacks in France will change the conditions for refugees in all European countries,” said one Syrian rebel commander who traveled to the coast to send his wife and two sons off on a smuggler’s boat for the Greek islands.

French and Greek officials have said fingerprints taken from one of the suicide bombers matched the prints of a man who entered Europe via the Aegean island of Leros on Oct. 3, using a fake Syrian passport.

That sparked widespread concerns that Islamic State extremists were capitalizing on international goodwill to sneak into Europe to carry out terrorist attacks.

On Tuesday, Turkey’s state-run Anadolu news agency reported that antiterrorism units in Istanbul had detained eight suspected Islamic State members who were planning to go to Europe. The suspects, who came from Casablanca, Morocco, were planning to take a bus to Izmir, cross the Aegean Sea to Greece, and then head to Germany, according to Turkish officials.

Across Europe now, politicians across Europe are trying to restrict or eliminate the open-door policies that allowed hundreds of thousands of migrants, many of them from Syria, to enter Europe this year...

Still more.

Europe Hasn't the Slightest Clue About the 'Refugees' Entering Their Countries

This is mind-boggling, "Paris Attacks Complicate Europe’s Already Strained Border Controls":

That human tide has left security forces all along the trail from Greece through Macedonia, Serbia, Croatia, Slovenia and Austria with little choice but to let migrants on through to their desired destination of Germany or Scandinavia.

Checks conducted en route vary, leaving the authorities with an incomplete picture of who is arriving.

Recent arrivals in Berlin said in interviews on Monday that they favored more security checks. Mobi Clureshi, 24, now helping as a translator at Berlin’s main refugee registration center, said he arrived from his native Pakistan via Russia three months ago. He went to Paris shortly before Germany and said he had felt unsafe in its multicultural environment.

“I think they allow too many people to get in,” he said. “They don’t check everyone.”

Fingerprinting should be more widespread, he suggested. “When you cross a border and you have a system like that,” he said, “the world would be more secure.”

Some 5,000 refugees are arriving daily at the five crossing points between Bavaria and Austria. The authorities try to take everyone’s fingerprints and check all identity documents, but the data is not stored because of German legal protections of privacy, Johannes Dimroth, a spokesman for the German Interior Ministry, said on Monday.

However, most of the new arrivals are applying for asylum and are taken to a registration center, where they are formally registered before a much more thorough check and an interview — with a translator, if necessary — as the asylum application is reviewed, Mr. Dimroth said.

The countries that the migrants enter before reaching Germany have even fewer protections. For Austria, which more than 500,000 people have traveled through this year, just over 70,000 requested asylum and went through a full check and registration. The large majority move on, with no record being taken of their having been there, because the country has insufficient infrastructure to do so, Interior Ministry officials in Vienna said. Most migrants also refuse to be registered before they reach the country in which they want to settle, they added.

The border with Slovenia is now the most common point to enter Austria after the trek through the Balkans. More than 220,000 people have passed through Slovenia since Oct. 17, when Hungary closed its border with Croatia and forced the migrants to shift west.

Slovenia has started constructing a razor wire fence on its 400-mile southern border with Croatia — a measure it insists is not shutting the frontier but merely controlling the influx and thus enforcing the Schengen zone, of which it is a member but Croatia is not. Once in Slovenia, migrants are fingerprinted, and in most cases their picture is taken, and their names and documents are entered into a European database. Names are also checked against databanks of criminal records.

Many migrants show up without documents. They are registered with names and information they give to border personnel, Slovenian officials said. Only 79 migrants so far have requested asylum in Slovenia.

Most of the migrants arrive in Slovenia from the Balkan trail that starts in Macedonia and goes to Serbia, which is in neither the European Union nor the Schengen zone, but where 430,000 migrants have been registered passing through this year. Interior Ministry officials there declined to say whether fingerprints were taken or personal documents examined. Only 548 people sought asylum in Serbia this year, officials said...

Who the hell knows who's entering those countries? The Europeans sure don't.

Emma Sky, The Unraveling

At Amazon, The Unraveling: High Hopes and Missed Opportunities in Iraq.

Gifts for the Grill Master

At Amazon, Shop Holiday Home & Garden Gift Guide - Grill Master.

Plus, Amazon Fire Kids Edition, 7" Display, Wi-Fi, 8 GB, Blue Kid-Proof Case.

The U.S. and Its Allies Can Defeat Islamic State. Joining with Putin, Assad, and Iran's Regime Would Be Immoral

From Garry Kasparov, at the Wall Street Journal, "Dancing With Dictators Against Islamic State":

Three days after coordinated terror attacks in Paris killed at least 129 people and put the lie to President Obama’s recent claim that Islamic State was “contained,” Mr. Obama took to the podium on Monday. Speaking from Antalya, Turkey, where he was attending a G-20 meeting, he threw the full weight of his rhetoric behind solidarity with France and behind the French military response against Islamic State, or ISIS. But he offered no policy changes. In other words, once again America is leading from behind.

Mr. Obama’s remarks in Turkey came after he sat down for an impromptu discussion with Russian dictator Vladimir Putin, who has shipped troops and military hardware to Syria to prop up the Bashar Assad regime and to produce desperately needed new war propaganda back home. A suggestion gaining currency in recent days—encouraged by the Putin-Obama photo op—that the U.S. and NATO cooperate with Mr. Putin against ISIS is ludicrous on many levels. The most obvious one being that Russian forces aren’t in Syria to fight ISIS.

Even after the death of 224 people—most of them Russian tourists—in the Oct. 31 Metrojet crash in Egypt that was almost certainly an ISIS terror bombing, Mr. Putin remains focused on his goals. He is in Syria to help Iran and Mr. Assad destroy any legitimate alternatives to the status quo. What is that status quo? The Assad regime and its Iranian backers controlling the region by force.

The Kremlin also wants to maintain a stream of Syrian refugees pouring into Europe. The migrant crisis is useful to Mr. Putin in two ways. It distracts European attention from his continuing military campaign against Ukraine. And the flood of refugees will enhance the fortunes of far-right European parties that openly embrace Mr. Putin, increasing pressure on the European Union to lift sanctions against Russia. If one of the terrorists in the Paris attack slipped into Europe with Syrian refugees, so much the better.

President Obama and other Western leaders desperate to resolve the conflict in Syria should keep in mind that the enemy of your enemy can also be your enemy. For the U.S. and the West, allying with Iran, Mr. Putin’s Russia and the Assad regime would be morally repugnant, strategically disastrous and entirely unnecessary. The immorality of such an alliance is self-evident: The U.S. officially designates Iran and Syria as state sponsors of terror...

He's brilliant.

Keep reading.

Republican Congressional Leaders Tell Obama to Stop Accepting Refugees from Syria (VIDEO)

Watch, at CBS Evening News, "Republican congressmen tell Obama to stop accepting Syrian refugees."

Plus, see the big roundup at Memeorandum, "Jeb Bush Splits With Republicans Over Syrian Refugees."

Ayaan Hirsi Ali Discusses the #ParisAttacks on 'The Kelly File' (VIDEO)

Following-up from this morning, "Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Heretic."

4 Passengers Removed from Flight at BWI Marshall Airport (VIDEO)

The passengers looked like they were from "Middle Easter descent."

At the Baltimore Sun, "No threat found after passengers removed from plane at BWI."

Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Heretic

Following-up from yesterday, "Europe's Terrorist War at Home."

Here's Ayaan Hirsi Ali's book, Heretic: Why Islam Needs a Reformation Now.

Resist the Urge for Retribution After #ParisAttacks

So argues neorealist scholar (and infamous anti-Israel political scientist) Stephen Walt, at Foreign Policy, "Don’t Give ISIS What It Wants":

When a shocking event like the Paris attacks occurs, we know how the world will respond. There will be dismay, an outpouring of solidarity and sympathy, defiant speeches by politicians, and a media frenzy. Unfortunately, these familiar reactions give the perpetrators some of what they want: attention for their cause and the possibility their targets will do something that unwittingly helps advance the perpetrators’ radical aims.

What is most needed in such moments is not anger, outrage, or finger-pointing, but calm resolution, cool heads, and careful thought. What happened in Paris is an untold tragedy for the victims and deeply offensive to all we hold dear, but we must respond with our heads and not just our hearts. Here are five lessons to bear in mind as we reassess the dangers and search for an effective response.

No. 1: Keep the threat in perspective.

The sudden and violent deaths of some 130 innocent people in a peaceful city invariably grips our attention. But an event like this cannot shake the foundations of society unless we let it. The deaths in Paris last Friday, Nov. 13, are tragic, but these and similar incidents pale in comparison with the carnage and inhumanity Europe suffered from either 1914 to 1918 or 1939 to 1945. For all its current troubles, Europe today is richer, freer, safer, more open, more equal, and more stable than it has been since any other time in its history, and those achievements must not be surrendered. If France or its neighbors turn their backs on what has been built in Europe over the past 60 years, it will be a victory the attackers would welcome but most emphatically do not deserve.

Let us also remember that other cities and societies have experienced similar events yet are thriving today. New York, Oslo, London, Boston, Madrid, Paris, Ankara, and several other cities have faced costly terrorist attacks in recent years, yet one visits them today and finds communities that have rebuilt and recovered and are doing just fine. As we mourn the dead, we should take comfort in knowing that terrorism is a weapon of the weak and thus can have only a limited material impact on its targets. The City of Light will be here and thriving long after those who ordered these attacks are gone and mostly forgotten...

Keep reading.

What's amazing to me is how strikingly identical is the so-called neorealist take on the terror threat to the Democrat Party's failed appeasement policies. We can just keep shrugging our shoulders, saying that these massive terrorist attacks aren't really a threat to our existential values (much less our survival), all the while deploying rank partisan attacks on the so-called "Islamophobes" who've been right on the terror threat time and time again. Walt links, for example, to this hit piece on the counter-jihad right, "America’s leading Islamophobes spreading fear, bigotry and misinformation."

Walt's a far-left partisan hack all dressed up in scholarly garb, ensconced at Harvard's Kennedy School, spewing crap like this that's fundamentally no different from the antiwar bilge scraping the bottom of the far left-wing fever swamps.

It's true that terror attacks like Paris on Friday the 13th are unlike the threat of a strategic nuclear attack during the Cold War. But over time, the refusal of Western states to stand up to the Islamic invaders will undoubtedly result in increasing decline, decay, and ultimate disintegration and destruction. Western societies, enfeebled by Utopian feel-goodism, will simply give up the fight altogether, and then be run over soon enough by the violent Muslim hordes from the Middle East, North Africa, and beyond. See my post on Niall Ferguson, "After the Fall of the Roman Empire, #ParisAttacks Should Be Warning to the West." Europe's on the leading edge of the Western collapse. Perhaps America's "splendid isolation" behind our natural ocean defenses, will buy us some time. But decline is a state of mind more than anything else. So we won't be that far behind Europe so long as progressive (regressive) types like Walt, and his presidential hero Obama, hold sway over politics, culture, and ideas.

Why Belgium Keeps Popping Up in Terror Attacks

At Der Spiegel, "The Brussels Connection: Why Belgium Keeps Popping Up in Terror Attacks":

The Molenbeek district in Brussels is a well-known hotbed of Islamist activity. It has been linked to four major terrorist attacks in recent years. It is also illustrative of the problems facing Europe as it tries to deal with its radicals.

Confirming that the building you're standing in front of is in fact one of Brussel's largest mosques requires asking a passerby. There's no minaret and not even a sign noting that the building on Rue Delaunoy 40 is an important house of Muslim worship. The roller shutters and the large aluminum doors look more like a car repair shop. But on Fridays, as many as 600 Muslims come to pray in the Al-Khalil mosque, as the janitor proudly explains.

It is believed that the mosque has ties with the Syrian arm of the Muslim Brotherhood and it is considered to be one of the biggest and most influential mosques in Molenbeek, the Brussels neighborhood that seems to always be popping up when acts of Islamist violence in Europe are investigated. There was a link to the foiled terrorist plot on a high-speed Thalys TGV train bound from Paris to Brussels in August and there were links to the massacre of the editorial staff of Charlie Hebdo in January. It has popped up in the news again following this weekend's horrific attacks in Paris. Authorities say that seven suspects have been arrested in Molenbeek and that several apartments have been searched.

On the streets here, people express shock over the attacks. "That's not Islam," says a man with a stubbly beard, cap and brown coat who is standing in front of the mosque with acquaintances on Sunday. The longer he speaks, the more worked up he gets and, in the end, there are tears in his eyes and his voice trembles. "I just don't understand it."

That's the one side of Molenbeek, a city district that could look like a working class district in any major city in Germany. For the overwhelming majority of its residents, the idea of killing in the name of Allah is inconceivable.

A Focal Point of the Islamist Scene

But there's another side to Molenbeek: The one that is considered to be the focal point of Western Europe's Islamist scene. Following Friday night's terrorist attacks in Paris, a suspect was arrested on Saturday afternoon at the Osseghem metro station in Molenbeek. A short time later, heavily armed police removed a man from a gray VW Golf not even 100 meters away who is believed to have been in Paris at the time of the attacks. A total of seven people have been arrested so far in Molenbeek.

It is estimated that Muslims make up 6 percent of the Belgian population, but that figure is 25 percent in Brussels and 40 percent in Molenbeek. The unemployment rate in the district is 30 percent, but it is believed to be even higher among immigrants. "Most of the Muslims are moderate, but there are also sharply radicalized groups with connections, for example, to the Salafists," says Brussels-based journalist Mehmet Koksal, who has been covering the Islamist scene for years. "They tell young people that they aren't European or Belgium and that it's 'us against the others.'"

The result of this can be tangible in the district. "If a person eats publicly during Ramadan or a woman doesn't wear a headscarf, they may become the subject of hostility," he explains...

That's not good. Not good at all.

Still more.

Frances Townsend, Former Homeland Security Adviser, Warns Against Terror Threat to the U.S. (VIDEO)

Shoot, get this lady back at Homeland Security, sheesh.

Watch, "Could the United States be the next Paris?"

'From Paris, With Love': U.S. Joint Direct Attack Munitions Marked with Message of Revenge, in Solidarity with France

Heh.

At London's Daily Mail, "'From Paris, With Love': Emotive message of revenge scrawled across the U.S. bombs destined for Syria."

Obama's Stubborn, Willful Complacency on #ISIS

From Marc Thiessen, at the Washington Post:

Somehow, to paraphrase President Obama, it has become routine — the president dismisses the terrorist threat, only to see terrorists carry out horrific attacks that give lie to his complacency.

On Sept. 6, 2012, Obama boasted at the Democratic National Convention that “al-Qaeda is on the path to defeat.” Five days later, al-Qaeda-linked terrorists attacked two U.S. diplomatic compounds in Benghazi, Libya, killing the U.S. ambassador and three other Americans on the anniversary of the 9/11 attacks.

On Jan. 7, 2014, Obama dismissed the Islamic State as the “JV” team in an interview with the New Yorker, adding that the rise of the Islamic State was not “a direct threat to us or something that we have to wade into.” That same month, the Islamic State began its march on Iraq, declaring a caliphate, burning people alive in cages and beheading Americans.

Then on Thursday, Obama did it again, telling ABC News, “I don’t think [the Islamic State is] gaining strength” and promising “we have contained them.” The very next day, the Islamic State launched the worst attack on Paris since World War II, killing at least 132 people and wounding more than 350 others.

How many times is this sad spectacle going to repeat itself?

Until the American people runs the Democrat cowards out of D.C.?

Probably.

But keep reading.

Charles Krauthammer Eviscerates 'Delusional' Obama on U.S. Response to #ParisAttacks (VIDEO)

Krauthammer's more fired up here than I've seen him in a long time.

Obama Won't Send Ground Troops to Defeat Islamic State (VIDEO)

As I've been saying, nothing's going to change. Nothing.

At London's Daily Mail, "Barack Obama won't send troops to the Middle East, says Paris attack was a 'setback'."

Candice Swanepoel for Victoria’s Secret Holiday 2015 (VIDEO)

She's so sweet and lovely.

Watch, "On the Set of the VS Bombshell Fragrance Campaign."

Republicans Revolt Against Obama Administration's Importation of Syrian Refugees (VIDEO)

Following-up from Sunday, "Obama Administration to Accelerate Importation of Syrian 'Refugees' to the United States."

And this is major.

At Politico, "Governors revolt against Obama's Syrian refugee plan."

And, "Syrian refugee fight sparks government shutdown threat":

A cascade of Republicans on Monday implored the Obama administration to scrap plans to resettle 10,000 Syrian refugees in the United States next year, saying they pose an unacceptable security risk in the wake of last week’s terrorist attacks in Paris.

And, in a dramatic twist, the sudden standoff is raising the possibility of a government shutdown next month...

The Dems are not doing so great on foreign policy right now, and it really --- really --- shows.

Keep reading.