Plagues - Not a Good Idea

Tom Ricks brings this up:

A British newspaper is reporting that some al Qaeda goofballs killed themselves playing with the bubonic plague in the hills of eastern Algeria. File this under "interesting if true." In general I have a pretty low opinion of British newspapers, which seem to me much more willing than American ones to run with rumors.

The Kings of War, whose contributors are going to give academic Web sites a good name, has some helpful commentary that includes a translation of the original article in the Algerian newspaper Echorouk that seems to have started the buzz.

Also, there is an interesting echo of Algerian-born Albert Camus in all this.