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Al Qaeda Group Bungled Test of Unconventional Weapon

I hope the new POTUS is ready, and understands that we are not playing tiddlywinks here with these pigs.

Couldn't happen to a nicer bunch though. Bad things, happening to bad people. Ain't karma a bitch?

TR

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/...ms-experiment/

Report: Al Qaeda Group Bungled Test of Unconventional Weapon
Tuesday, January 20, 2009

By Eli Lake, Washington Times

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.

Quote:

Originally Posted by TR

....that the accident killed at least 40 Al Qaeda operatives,...

Bwahahahahahahaha

Couldn't have happened to a nicer bunch of people IMO. :munchin

Here's hoping they don't stumble upon the effects of a "Walter Fart". :eek:

Quote:

Originally Posted by The Reaper (Post 245123)

Thanks TR for that uplifting article. It made my day. 40 down and a WHOLE bunch more to go!! Where to begin?
:munchin

Pithiness aside, I wonder why this intelligence official is willing to comment and then dismiss it all in the same interview? I wonder who leaked it to the tabloid?
http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage...cle2146286.ece

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Sdiver.. LOL Achmed the Dead Terrorist (A ... C...phlegm!)! Do you think Jeff Dunham is on their hitlist!? Geez, he better NOT BE! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1uwOL4rB-go

I read the article about the plague, a couple days ago. Thought it had a smell. The Sun is not a conservative righteous paper and when they didn't point a finger and yell "Bush Did It" or the CIA. I suspected that AQ had stepped on their little wienie's,, big time..

Don't ya just love AirSoftAssHats???

The gene pool is cleaning it self for a change...

A solute to the inept and stupid, may their brains fester with the foot-print of a pig..

Quote:

Originally Posted by The Reaper (Post 245123)

Couldn't happen to a nicer bunch though. Bad things, happening to bad people. Ain't karma a bitch? TR

Quote:

Originally Posted by JJ_BPK (Post 245138)

The gene pool is cleaning it self for a change...A solute to the inept and stupid, may their brains fester with the foot-print of a pig..

Nominate both for "Quotes of the Year!":lifter

Holly

40 crazed Jihadi's DOA, but was it bungled handling, sabotage OR a dry run on test subjects for the greater cause.

Should be interesting as it unfolds.

I'm glad 40 died.

But someday, they'll get it right. Or at least right enough.

But someday, they'll get it right. Or at least right enough.

Therein lies the problem. The death of the 40 indicates that some steps were correct prior to the one that went wrong. I think they do not need to be 100% correct - a lesser score, if applied in the right way, might suffice. Hopefully, that won't happen.

Scary thought especially in light of our new Commander in Chief's comments today about the false choice between freedom and security. Thanks but no thanks if water boarding or intercepting telephone calls means the difference between dying from the plague or not than I expect my President to do what needs to be done. Sadly he won't.

Quote:

Originally Posted by D9 (Post 245163)

I'm glad 40 died.

But someday, they'll get it right. Or at least right enough.

Good thing Panetta is in charge, getting the Agency in order, and Gitmo is being closed.:rolleyes:

TR

Quote:

Originally Posted by rubberneck (Post 245173)

Easy for him to say when he has security out the wazzoo, armoured limo, secure air transport and a bunker set up for NBC.

We can only hope that they will keep killing their people off at a rate that will slow them down.

Good Intel and a Proactive game plan is the only thing to keep us ahead of them. The new CDR scares me and I can only hope he will open his eyes and listen to the experts "Military/Intel"

I think that this is an interesting story, but that it is generating too much hysteria.

We have known for some time that AQ is working on biological weapons. With a few PhD's and clean rooms constructed from materials acquired at Home Depot, they could certainly wreak havoc. This has been written about ad nauseam, yet they do not seem to have executed against the plan.

Instead, what we see is a group of geographically isolated zealots experimenting with a type of plague which poses no real threat to Western civilization. My understanding is that bubonic and pneumonic plague can both be treated effectively with modern drugs, although it is much more difficult in the case of PP. There is no place in civilized society without access to adequate supplies of potent antibiotics.

So, forty true believers demonstrate their stupidity and ineptitude first through their choice of weapon and second through their amateur hour attempts at handling and safety. Here's a news flash - producing large amounts of BP is not difficult, it is the handling and distribution which require some measure of sophistication.

I have no doubt that AQ will eventually learn from its mistakes here and get better at handling and distribution. However the real story is that, after over ten years of effort focused in this area, we are being shown in vivid color how pitiful their vision and execution actually are. If they can't handle BP properly, they are light years from being able to deliver anything that we should actually be worried about.

Where is your phalanx of highly educated converts, AQ? Why is your "weapons program" in the hands of a bunch of glorified monkeys?

When we finish laughing, my friends and I will go back to hunting you like animals.

I see no hysteria.

The MSM barely mentioned this while gushing over the inauguration, and the new "first pet" options.

IMHO, the American people are largely asleep and 9/11 is but a distant memory.

The measures that have kept us safe for the past seven years are being dismantled like the staging on the Mall.

I predict that we will be visited again by Islamic terrorists, and we will wish for the good old days of GWB, and his steady leadership.

"Those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it."

George Santayana

TR

There is an excellent piece in today's Washington Post from a former Bush speech writer. I can't help but feel that we are headed for dark days with a President who doesn't seem to grasp the reality staring him in the face. He has placed the cart before the horse. He had better hope that he is really lucky because if anything goes down on his watch it is over for the Democrats for a long long time.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...012103215.html

Quote:

2,688 Days
By Marc A. Thiessen
Thursday, January 22, 2009; Page A17

When President Bush left office on Tuesday, America marked 2,688 days without a terrorist attack on its soil. There are 1,459 days until the next inauguration. Whether Barack Obama is standing on the Capitol steps to be sworn in a second time depends on whether he succeeds in replicating Bush's achievement.

As the new president receives his intelligence briefings, certain facts must now be apparent: Al-Qaeda is actively working to attack our country again. And the policies and institutions that George W. Bush put in place to stop this are succeeding. During the campaign, Obama pledged to dismantle many of these policies. He follows through on those pledges at America's peril -- and his own. If Obama weakens any of the defenses Bush put in place and terrorists strike our country again, Americans will hold Obama responsible -- and the Democratic Party could find itself unelectable for a generation.

Consider, for example, the CIA program that Bush created to detain and question senior leaders captured in the war on terror. Many of these terrorists, including Sept. 11 mastermind Khalid Sheik Mohammed, refused to talk -- until Bush authorized the CIA to use enhanced interrogation techniques. Information gained using those techniques is responsible for stopping a number of planned attacks -- including plots to blow up the American consulate in Karachi, Pakistan; to fly airplanes into the towers of Canary Wharf in London; and to fly a hijacked airplane into the Library Tower in Los Angeles.
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During the campaign, Obama described the techniques used to prevent these attacks as "torture." He promised that if elected, he would "have the Army Field Manual govern interrogation techniques for all United States Government personnel and contractors." If he follows through, he will effectively kill a program that stopped al-Qaeda from launching another Sept. 11-style attack. It was easy for Obama the candidate to criticize the CIA program. But as president, what will he do when the next senior al-Qaeda leader -- with actionable intelligence on plots to strike our homeland -- is captured and refuses to talk? Will the president allow the CIA to question this terrorist using enhanced interrogation techniques? If Obama refuses and our country is attacked, he will bear responsibility.

Consider also the National Security Agency's program to monitor foreign terrorist communications. In the Senate, Obama voted against confirming then-NSA Director Michael Hayden to lead the CIA because, in Obama's words, Hayden was "the architect and chief defender of a program of wiretapping and collection of phone records outside of FISA oversight." In 2007, Obama voted against the Protect America Act, which temporarily authorized the NSA program. Last year, he promised to filibuster a long-term authorization but at the last minute switched his vote. He explained that he still wanted to make changes to the law, including stripping out immunity for telecommunications companies for their cooperation with the NSA -- which would effectively kill the program. And he promised that "once I'm sworn in as President . . . my Attorney General [will] conduct a comprehensive review of all our surveillance programs, and . . . make further recommendations on any steps needed to preserve civil liberties."

Now that he has been sworn in, will Obama allow the program to continue through 2012 as Congress authorized -- breaking his pledge to his liberal base? Or will he move forward with his promised review and impose new constraints on the NSA's ability to learn what terrorists are planning? If he does, what if we fail to connect the dots before the next attack?

Obama faces a similar quandary regarding Iraq. Bush left him with a stabilized Iraq, where al-Qaeda is in retreat and American forces are coming home by the end of 2011 under a policy of "return on success." Candidate Obama promised to dramatically accelerate this withdrawal and to remove American troops within 16 months. Just last week, senior Obama adviser David Axelrod declared on ABC's "This Week" that Obama intends to keep that promise. The problem is that Gen. David Petraeus and the Joint Chiefs are not likely to recommend such a rapid and irresponsible withdrawal. That leaves Obama with two choices: He can scale back his plans and continue the slower drawdown already set in motion by President Bush. Or he can overrule his military commanders -- and pursue a rapid drawdown over their objections. If he does this, he will own the potentially devastating results. In 2007, President Bush revealed intelligence that Osama bin Laden had told al-Qaeda leaders in Iraq to form a cell to conduct attacks inside the United States -- then the surge drove them from their havens and set back those plans. If Obama allows al-Qaeda to regain its Iraqi havens, and the terrorists use them to strike our country, he will not be able to blame Bush.

President Obama has inherited a set of tools that successfully protected the country for 2,688 days -- and he cannot dismantle those tools without risking catastrophic consequences. On Tuesday, George W. Bush told a cheering crowd in Midland, Tex., that his administration had left office without another terrorist attack. When Barack Obama returns to Chicago at the end of his time in office, will he be able to say the same?

The writer, who served in senior positions at the White House and the Pentagon from 2001 to 2009, was most recently chief speechwriter for President George W. Bush.