It’s been crystal clear to anyone who cares to think about it for even a moment that the recent influx of “Syrian refugees” would contain terrorists, and most likely ISIS terrorists. There really was never any question about it; their arrival was now made easy as pie, and their ability to travel around Europe has been facilitated as well.

I wrote this morning that I didn’t think in the case of yesterday’s Paris attacks that the perpetrators were likely to have been among these newer refugees, mainly because of time constraints and because there were fewer in France than in a country like Germany or in Scandinavia. Nevertheless, the almost-certain presence of a significant number of terrorists has long been one of my arguments against allowing and welcoming the “refugees,” and legions of Europeans and Americans agree with me.

It’s not rocket science. It’s common sense, and common sense is common. It’s not commonly demonstrated among our “leaders” today, however (I’m getting tired of putting so many words in quotes).

Now we get this announcement:

A Greek official in charge of police forces said the Syrian passport holder whose ID was found on the body of one of the terrorists in Paris landed in Greece last month on a boat from Syria. (It is not clear if the terrorist and the passport holder are the same person yet.) “We announce that the passport holder had passed from Leros on Oct. 3. where he was identified based on EU rules,” Citizen Protection Minister Nikos Toskas said. “We do not know if the passport was checked by other countries through which the holder likely passed.

Notice the arrival was very recent; last month. So it didn’t take long for him to hook up with the others, or for the plan to become operational. Of course, there are two caveats. The first is that early information is often incorrect. The second is that we don’t know whether the ID on the body was from someone else (or fake), or whether it was the true identity of the terrorist.

More here:

Belgian police arrested ‘a number’ of people in Brussels believed to be connected to the Paris attacks.

Officers launched raids in the Molenbeek district of the Belgian capital, after a car with Belgian licence plates was spotted outside the Bataclan last night.

If I were running a newspaper, I’d leave out the “car with Belgian plates” part. Do we—and the terrorists—need to know exactly how these people were traced? Next time there won’t be any car with Belgian plates.

More:

It has emerged that one of the terrorists had a match ticket and tried to get into the France v Germany game armed with a suicide vest when he was turned away by the security guard…

The terrorist fled and detonated his vest.

A second terrorist exploded approximately three minutes later while a third blew up outside a nearby McDonalds.

That’s a case of effective security at the entry to the venue, rather than effective intelligence. But at least it’s something.

Three terrorists have been identified, two by passports (one with an Eyptian passport) that may or may not have been clues to their real identities, and one a more long-term resident of France (the article does not say a citizen of France, however). The possible citizen was ID’d by fingerprints, so authorities are fairly sure who he was, and guess what?:

[He] was from the neighbourhood of Courcouronnes, about 20 miles south of Paris.

French reports say that the man, who was around 30 years old, was already known to French anti-terrorist authorities prior to last night’s attacks.

This is the pattern with the terrorists who’ve been here longer; they are known to authorities, but authorities and the government allow them to continue to reside and function as free men in their host countries. A report from the concert massacre survivors is that two of the terrorists there spoke perfect French. In addition:

Local residents suspect that the terrorists came from within the community, and are very suspicious of the mosque.

‘They targeted the most popular cafes with young people, and they knew the local area in detail, even the one way system,’ said Natalie Augier, a historian and terrorism expert who lives nearby.

‘They had kids on the corners with mobile phones to warn them if the police were coming. They had so much local knowledge, and they just melted away afterwards.

So my tentative conclusion so far is that most of the perpetrators have probably been in France for a while, fueled by the addition of some recent “refugee” arrivals. Some in the first group may have been citizens, but there’s really no information on that and it’s difficult to say.

So, remind me: why is it that Europe and the US has been taking in people from Arab and other Muslim countries in such remarkable numbers? Is some sort of vague and perhaps phony economic advantage in terms of cheap labor worth it, for the legal arrivals? And do the humanitarian arguments for accepting the “refugees” mean we must commit collective suicide? And furthermore (and I’ve been wondering this since 9/11): why allow people from countries such as Syria (and many others of that ilk) to come here temporarily to study or to travel? Why? I can think of no compelling reason, and yet it’s been continuing to happen since 9/11 with virtually no interruption.