A shocking report from the European Union shows that millions of euros in welfare payments made to Islamic State fighters are ending up in the coffers of ISIS so they can wage war in Iraq and Syria.

USA Today:

Governments across Europe have accidentally paid taxpayer-funded welfare benefits such as unemployment funds, disability pensions and housing allowances to Islamic State militants who have used the money to wage war in Iraq and Syria, authorities and terrorism experts say.

Danish officials said this week that 29 citizens were given $100,000 in public pension benefits because they were considered too ill or disabled to work, and they then fled to Syria to fight for the radical group.

Denmark has one of the world's most generous social-welfare systems, which provides eligible unemployed people up to $120 a day. In addition to trying to reclaim the benefits accidentally disbursed, the government is trying to tighten legislation for welfare claims made by suspected militants.

"It is a huge scandal that we disburse money from the welfare fund in Denmark for people who go to Syria," said Troels Lund Poulsen, Denmark's labor minister. "Staying in a war zone and directly or indirectly taking part in military operations is not something that is in any way compatible with receiving disability benefits."

Several other E.U. countries have also unknowingly contributed funds to the enemy.

Belgium reports that several of the plotters who took part in the Brussels terror attacks received hundreds of thousands of dollars in government benefits. 

France has finally cut off benefits to several hundred jihadis who are no longer in the country.  They had been receiving the benefits anyway.

Sweden and Great Britain say several hundred ISIS fighters took advantage of the generous welfare payments to collect benefits while fighting in Syria and Iraq.

No one knows how much the jihadis have received across the E.U., but it seems likely that the total is in the millions of euros.  That certainly buys a lot of bombs and suicide bombers – enough to kill scores of innocents.  And the problem isn't that the governments don't know who the jihadis are.  They simply lacked the will to cut them off from taxpayer assistance.

Stalin famously said, "When we hang the capitalists, they will sell us the rope we use."  No doubt ISIS is thinking that when they finally triumph, it will be because governments generously funded their own destruction.