Report: Al Qaeda Group Bungled Test of Unconventional Weapon

fox news ^ | 1/20/2009 | Eli Lake, Washington Times

[tobyhill]

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.

[nufsed]

40 dead! Haven’t they run out of virgins yet?

[WilliamofCarmichael]

I predict:

Headline:

New York Times reveals CIA was source of plague
Anonymous Source: We Used Plague On Civilians
Anonymous source in CIA tells of U.S. biological attack on Algerian civilians . . . .

Them Nytimen are easy to read -- it's what they write that's hard to believe.

[Travis McGee]

Plague is easily cured with ABs, but only if you are diagnosed and treated very rapidly. If there is a lag, things get ugly fast. The key to a successful attack would be finding an ideal target group, based on a weak medical system, crowded living conditions, the right climate, and scores of infected rats/fleas being released over the entire area simultaneously. Under such a situation, I think you could cause many thousands of deaths before an effective response could be mounted, and of course the media-driven panic effect would also be enormous.

[bray]

As long as they don’t torture any of these poor misunderstood terrorists, that’s all we care about.

Pray for America, Our Troops and Hussain’s Salvation

[erman]

Maybe they got their hands on some that super potent Cold War rooskie stuff. Or they could just be generally incompetent.

my vote is for muzzies to be generally incompetent. The competent ones end up in jobs and have vocations. The losers end up like our democrat party. Getting just enough of an education to be dangerous.

In other words, they know the engineering but can't "create" great engineering projects... but they know enough to knock something down.

They know enough microbiology to incubate and aerosolize Yersinia pestis or some variant of the plague but are so stupid that they think face masks or simple technique will prevent their deaths.

frickin' ignorant hateful little maggots. They need to get a weaponized virus to spread throughout their populace. Like a polio or influenza strain that is rapidly fatal and easily transmissible

[SunkenCiv]

Thanks!

[tvdog12345]

How does a fleas-on-rats disease get weaponized? Aerosol? Infect suicide-bomber types and have them infect others?

Aerosol is right. There is bubonic plague (transmitted by rats) and pneumonic plague (transmitted through the air). Pneumonic plague is almost 100% fatal without treatment. An infected person has pneumonia and infects others with droplets spread by coughing. An epidemic can be created with an aerosol bomb exploded at the right altitude. If the organism is bioengineered to be resistant to antibiotics, you have a potent weapon.

There are two problems: (1) as with any bioweapon, you risk killing some of your own side; and (2) constructing a bomb that explodes at the right altitude, creates aerosol droplets of the right size, and doesn't kill the organism is a problem.

[databoss]

Looks like the guys at the Al Qaeda skunkworks made another great weapon...

ready, fire, aim...

[autumnraine]

Ok, now that crap has me TERRIFIED!!

They are worried that it has spread to other “terrorists cells”?? That could mean in a market, on a plane, wherever!

They have addressed if this is VIRAL or BACTERIAL. Do they know yet?

[autumnraine]

An outbreak of disease is one reason I have become determined to stock up on several months supply of food.

At least maybe we can hole up and eat for a while until it dies down. God willing.

[GOPJ]

Maybe they got their hands on some that super potent Cold War rooskie stuff. Or they could just be generally incompetent.

Or knowing their great respect for life, maybe they infected 40 of their own people to see if it worked...

[GOPJ]

Maybe they got their hands on some that super potent Cold War rooskie stuff. Or they could just be generally incompetent.

Or knowing their great respect for life, maybe they infected 40 of their own people to see if it worked...

Or 80 - the other 40 now walking among us...

[allmost]

It is possible. They spend lots of $$$ and years of training on their operatives. I don’t think this was disregard for the agents. They might have some really bad stuff. I hope they’re just stupid but counting on that would be well.. stupid.

[absalom01]

I hate to say it but anyone have any predictions about when the next hit will be? It’s gotta be soon now that Baby Killer Obama is now ‘in charge’.

Well, the one thing we can be certain of is that the enemy will continue to try, until he is either killed or he succeeds.

[CaribouCrossing]

I have not read yet if it is viral or bacterial. Hopefully we will learn more in the days ahead.

[Travis McGee]

It would be a lot easier to inject a bunch of flea-ridden rats just before releasing them in dozens of locations around a target city at the same time. In a city with a weak medical infrastructure, it would cause a lot of deaths before it was gotten under control. Not as many as an optimized aerosolized form, but a hundred times simpler for a low-tech group to execute.

[hiredhand]

Good points...

Not to elevate paranoia, but I know somebody who is qualified to suggest that Y. Pestis is "relatively easy" to engineer such that it's antibiotic resistant. This person suggested that perhaps Al Qaeda did this based on the supposition that if they're messing with plague, they "should" have had the necessary antibiotics to fight it if they had an "oopsie". Either they didn't have the antibiotics necessary to combat an exposure, or they designed it to be antibiotic resistant and then had the "oopsie".

[Centurion2000]

Under certain limited conditions, Y. Pestis could be a very effective weapon. That is, when used against a poor people in crowded 3rd world conditions, who do not have ready access to large amounts of antibiotics and quality medical care. The plague could do enormous damage, and still be easily contained.

Looks like Detroit, LA, NYC and DC could be in trouble then.

[cookcounty]

"I'm not scared. The idiots chose a "biological weapons" that's easily curable."

It's pnuemonic. It's easily curable if you get proper treatment within 3 hours of symptoms onset. Otherwise you are dead.

[The_Reader_David]

I would observe that the downside of killing some of your own side is not seen as a negative by post-Qutb politicized Islam. Indeed they have a delivery system for pneumonic plague that is not available to civilized powers: coughing infected jihadis mingling in crowded place, and esp. in airplanes with recirculating air.