Thanks for the warm welcome! Hope I can add something useful to these discussions occasionally.
These latest coordinated attempts to cause conflicts between branches of Islam are very worrying. This is actually part of an ongoing attempt to destabilize the governments in Iraq and Pakistan. (Similar attacks on Shias happened last week in Saudi Arabia.) This effort was also behind the attempts to kill Musharrif in Pakistan.
AQ knows that having radical Islamic governments installed in Pakistan (nukes) and Saudi (oil) would be a tremendous blow to the West. Especially if continued conflict in Iraq kept large numbers of coalition troops "fixed" in place there for any lenght of time. Let's hope the Shia's understand that this is an effort to mainipulate them. (And that the Iranians stay on the sidelines.) It could well backfire in AQ's face and actually promote greater efforts to coexist. (Here's hoping...)
I forget who mentioned smallpox above, but let me assure you there have been no confirmed cases of Smallpox anywhere. That would be a world health emergency of unprecedented proportions, and couldn't be kept quiet. That region (South Asia) has many endemic illnesses that appear periodically. (Some of which have also been researched as BW.) I see some of you are familiar with ProMed mail, which is a great way to get the scoop from the horse's mouth on infectious diseases. (Now *there* is a mixed metaphor for you!) For example, a case of Crimean-Congo haemorrhagic fever in Kandahar is not surprising. Fifty cases in Cleveland would be a different story...
Speaking of bioterrorism, I see on Steve Quayles site that he thinks some sort of airborne disease was intentionally unleashed on US bases in Germany. Not so. It happened on German bases, and is a an unusually bad case of known disease. A poor Dutch translation initially referred to US bases, but it was later corrected.
http://www.expatica.com/source/site_article.asp?subchannel_id=52&story_id=4888 (Has he ever gotten anything right, prediction wise? My personal rule of thumb, is that if a website has links to people who want to sell me Gold, I take everything else with a pinch of salt...)
Anyway. It's lunchtime, so I'm off.
I forget who mentioned smallpox above, but let me assure you there have been no confirmed cases of Smallpox anywhere. That would be a world health emergency of unprecedented proportions, and couldn't be kept quiet.That's sort of the way I feel about OBL. If he had been captured on or about January 20, 2004, as some have speculated, then the news and potential impact of that event would be so great that it couldn't be kept quiet for more than a few days.
BTW, what ever happened to the killer flu that was supposed to ravage the world this flu season? According to today's NYSlimes, it was relatively mild and insignificant. No mutant or biologically engineered strains. I don't even know anyone who came down with the real flu (as opposed to the misnamed "stomach flu").