“I never saw him going to the Mosque. He was not a Muslim. During Ramadan I saw him smoking.”

Does that really mean that Bouhlel was not a Muslim? No. If he really did not attend mosque and did not observe Ramadan, all that means is that he was a bad Muslim. He could at some point have awakened and thought, I’m headed for hell. What great deed can I perform that will outweigh all my evil deeds? And the answer to that question, of course, is jihad, the greatest of all deeds.

Also, does the severely compromised BBC know if any of these assertions are actually true? No. And after all the misinformation we saw coming out in the wake of the Orlando jihad massacre — the false claims that jihad murderer Omar Mateen was gay and acting out of revenge, etc. — these claims may very well be false as well.

Anyway, the five arrests strongly suggest that Bouhlel was no “lone wolf,” but part of an active jihad network. France needs to recognize that it is at war. Did it pause for days of national mourning after every battle in World War I and World War II (at least for as long as it lasted in that one)? Or did it get up and grimly set to the task at hand?

“Attack on Nice: Five held by French police,” BBC, July 16, 2016: