40 Al-Q Fighters Killed By The Plague....and actually, yeah.

[The Dark]

I checked my usual American, British, French, and Chinese news outlets - I can't find this story in any of them (I didn't check Mail and Telegraph since those were already done)

The only outlets I can find it in got it from The Sun, and the only papers I could find with it (as opposed to bloggers) are the Telegraph and the Daily Mail, as mentioned earlier. So far, it's all coming from a single source citing anonymous sources. It may be accurate, but there's no corroboration/verification as of yet.

[Crayz9000]

As long as they don't start trying to weaponize it, I think we're OK...

[xerex]

well two things that raise red flags for me are

1. they call osama a madman, some thing seen printed only the tabloid press and

2. they take no pains to mention that AQLIM is actually older than osama's AQ since its descends from the Islamic Salvation Front which won the 1992 Algerian election but was blocked by the French backed military.

[Prometheus Unbound]

well two things that raise red flags for me are

1. they call osama a madman, some thing seen printed only the tabloid press and

2. they take no pains to mention that AQLIM is actually older than osama's AQ since its descends from the Islamic Salvation Front which won the 1992 Algerian election but was blocked by the French backed military.

I don't think you "get" The Sun. It's usually just slightly more accurate than The Onion on many topics. It's one of the trashiest tabloids in the UK. Unfortunately, it's also the most widely circulated in the UK too

Also, it does say an "Exclusive" at the top; perhaps why other news outlets haven't mentioned it?

[General Zod]

I agree that, as far as I can see, their's nothing impossible or particularily implausible about the story itself. What is a little suspicious is that I haven't heard about it elsewhere on a more prominant source like CNN, since as you say its an attention-grabber. However, that proves nothing either way.

It's only an attention grabber because cases of the plague are so damned rare these days. The last time I recall it even getting mentioned was with regard to squirrels carrying it, and that was no more than a paragraph blurb somewhere in the back. Really, it's about as noteworthy as saying "militants with no access to antibiotics die from pneumonia".

[PainRack]

It's only an attention grabber because cases of the plague are so damned rare these days. The last time I recall it even getting mentioned was with regard to squirrels carrying it, and that was no more than a paragraph blurb somewhere in the back. Really, it's about as noteworthy as saying "militants with no access to antibiotics die from pneumonia".

Dude..... We're talking about newspapers picking up on Osama Bin Ladin niece model pictures........... If a plague was ravaging Al Queda dens, its newsworthy.

[Sidewinder]

It'd be nice if those Mohammedians end up believing that they were being smited by god.

It's more likely the Islamists will claim the plague was a biological weapon "made in America" to kill Muslims. Those nuts can be so damn predictable.

[Ziggy Stardust]

United Press International is running the story, but the only source they quote is The Sun. I've been searching world newspaper internet archives, and the only stories from Algerian papers in the past few days using the words "terrorist" or "Droudkal" make no mention of the plague. The only story using the word "plague" is French radio broadcast from 2003. Admittedly, these archives generally only use major publications, and I don't know too much about the state of journalism in Algeria, but its possible even important stories wouldn't be noticed or released for whatever reason.

[Kanastrous]

It'd be nice if those Mohammedians end up believing that they were being smited by god.

It's more likely the Islamists will claim the plague was a biological weapon "made in America" to kill Muslims. Those nuts can be so damn predictable.

If they want to credit us with the ability to design organism capable of preferentially infecting people based upon their religion, well, let 'em. Maybe it will increase their fear of us.

[Ziggy Stardust]

Searching on NewsNow, every story I can find references The Sun. In fact, no newspaper anywhere in the world had this story before The Sun. This is awfully suspicious for a paper that doesn't even employ an Africa correspondent. I smell bullshit.

[Edi]

If that's the case, then it's possible they made it up out of whole cloth. But if they did, have to give it credit for being flawless for lack of the normal telltales of bullshit and inconsistencies with reality.

[General Zod]

If that's the case, then it's possible they made it up out of whole cloth. But if they did, have to give it credit for being flawless for lack of the normal telltales of bullshit and inconsistencies with reality.

I did a bit of digging through AP archives and couldn't find anything there backing this up. You'd think of anyone had an article corroborating something like this it would be the AP.

[ray245]

And to think I was getting flammed all over due to asking a reasonable question.

Although I have to wonder, in the span of the last few decades, has there been any other reports of people living in Afganistan suffering from the Plague on a large scale?

[Broomstick]

And to think I was getting flammed all over due to asking a reasonable question.

Although I have to wonder, in the span of the last few decades, has there been any other reports of people living in Afganistan suffering from the Plague on a large scale?

I think the most recent "epidemic" was an outbreak in India in the mid-1990's that killed maybe 50 people - nothing like the pre-antibiotic era.

Since such common (and cheap) antibiotics as tetracycline and streptomycin are effective treatments for the infection even a lot of poor areas of the world are able to afford to treat people. Thus, we just don't see outbreaks like we used to. That, and it's widely known that fleas are the main transmission, particularly rat fleas. Infected animals can be culled, anti-flea measures taken, and medicine given. It's only when people have access to none of the above that you see death rates like in the Middle Ages.

[MKSheppard]

Link

Al Qaeda bungles arms experiment

An al Qaeda affiliate in Algeria closed a base earlier this month after an experiment with unconventional weapons went awry, a senior U.S. intelligence official said Monday.

The official, who spoke on the condition he not be named because of the sensitive nature of the issue, said he could not confirm press reports that the accident killed at least 40 al Qaeda operatives, but he said the mishap led the militant group to shut down a base in the mountains of Tizi Ouzou province in eastern Algeria.

He said authorities in the first week of January intercepted an urgent communication between the leadership of al Qaeda in the Land of the Maghreb (AQIM) and al Qaeda's leadership in the tribal region of Pakistan on the border with Afghanistan. The communication suggested that an area sealed to prevent leakage of a biological or chemical substance had been breached, according to the official.

"We don't know if this is biological or chemical," the official said.

The story was first reported by the British tabloid the Sun, which said the al Qaeda operatives died after being infected with a strain of bubonic plague, the disease that killed a third of Europe's population in the 14th century. But the intelligence official dismissed that claim.

AQIM, according to U.S. intelligence estimates, maintains about a dozen bases in Algeria, where the group has waged a terrorist campaign against government forces and civilians. In 2006, the group claimed responsibility for an attack on foreign contractors. In 2007, the group said it bombed U.N. headquarters in Algiers, an attack that killed 41 people.

Al Qaeda is believed by U.S. and Western experts to have been pursuing biological weapons since at least the late 1990s. A 2005 report on unconventional weapons drafted by a commission led by former Sen. Charles Robb, Virginia Democrat, and federal appeals court Judge Laurence Silberman concluded that al Qaeda's biological weapons program "was extensive, well organized and operated two years before the Sept. 11" terror attacks in the U.S.

Another report from the Commission on the Prevention of Weapons of Mass Destruction Proliferation, released in December, warned that "terrorists are more likely to be able to obtain and use a biological weapon than a nuclear weapon."

British authorities in January 2003 arrested seven men they accused of producing a poison from castor beans known as ricin. British officials said one of the suspects had visited an al Qaeda training camp. In the investigation into the case, British authorities found an undated al Qaeda manual on assassinations with a recipe for making the poison.

The late leader of al Qaeda in Iraq, Abu Musab Zarqawi, was suspected of developing ricin in northern Iraq. Then-Secretary of State Colin L. Powell referred to the poison in his presentation to the U.N. Security Council in February 2003 that sought to lay the groundwork for the U.S. invasion of Iraq.

Roger Cressey, a former senior counterterrorism official at the National Security Council under Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, told The Washington Times that al Qaeda has had an interest in acquiring a poisons capability since the late 1990s.

"This is something that al Qaeda still aspires to do, and the infrastructure to develop it does not have to be that sophisticated," he said.

Mr. Cressey added that he also is concerned about al Qaeda in the Land of the Maghreb, which refers to the North African countries of Algeria, Morocco and Tunisia.

"Al Qaeda in the Maghreb is probably the most operationally capable affiliate in the organization right now," he said.