Thursday, August 21, 2008

Death in Denver - A Small Event with an Ominous Warning

If a Muslim set off a nuclear weapon in a major U.S. city, would our government officials tell us it wasn't terrorism?


From Ilana Freedman,
Editor and CEO of Gerard Group International, Inc.


Denver Police have closed their investigation into the mysterious death of an indigent man in a suite of a luxury Denver hotel. They announced that his death was suicide, and that there was no link to terrorism. An FBI spokesman has also stated that the incident has no apparent terrorism connection.

The man was Saleman Abdirahman Dirie and, the coroner's verdict notwithstanding, his death raises far more questions than have been answered by the Denver police, who seemed quite happy to wash their hands of the whole affair. But the story surrounding Dirie's death is bizarre, and needs to be unraveled.

The facts, as far as they have been released, are these: Saleman Abdirahman Dirie was a 29-year-old Canadian citizen, a Muslim, and a former refugee from Somalia with no visible means of support and no money. He came to Denver from Ottawa by bus and checked into an upscale hotel (where the least expensive rooms rent for nearly $250 a night) for which he paid cash. There are reports that several thousand dollars in cash were also found in his room. He was not seen again until his body was found six days later next to a one pound jar of sodium cyanide crystals.

If you consider that this all took place in the city where the Democratic National Convention was about to take place, suspicion becomes alarm.

The questions themselves are disquieting. Why was he in Denver? Where did he get the cash to pay for his room? Where did he get a full pound of sodium cyanide crystals, enough to poison hundreds of people, and what was he planning to do with it?

Sodium cyanide is one of several cyanide salts that are among the most rapidly acting of all known poisons. These crystals are potent inhibitors of respiration, depriving the body of its ability to use oxygen. Its effect is deadly and swift. Mixed with acid, it becomes significantly more potent as it generates a highly toxic gas. Its close cousin, hydrogen cyanide, was used by the Nazis to produce Zyclon B, the gas of choice to murder millions of Jews in the Nazis' infernal gas chambers.

In short, a little goes a long way. So no one needs a pound of sodium cyanide to commit suicide, when a mere taste will do. A more likely scenario is that his curiosity got the better of him and he opened the jar, accidentally breathing or ingesting some of the cyanide. That would make it, perhaps, an accidental poisoning, but hardly a suicide.

The more important question remains: why else would anyone need a pound of cyanide? The timing of Dirie's visit to Denver, less than two weeks before the Democratic convention, raises an alarming possibility. National Republican and Democratic Conventions have been considered a high value target since 9/11 and the last round was surrounded by heavy (if imperfect) security. Compromising the water or HVAC systems in the Convention Center is a plan that might seem quite attractive in the name of jihad. And it could kill several hundred people.

The combined circumstances make the possibility that Dirie was an operative part of a jihad plot very real. Evolving strategies among the terrorists groups seem to lean towards small cells carrying out limited attacks on prime targets. This situation could be that, with Dirie being a one man jihadi whose job was to place the poison where it would do the most damage. On the other hand, if a very large attack were planned, as seems possible in this case, he might have been one of a larger group of terrorists, each with a single role to play. In this case, he would not have known the parts of the plots or the people who would carry them out. If the accidental death scenario is correct, then his extreme incompetence, which ended in his contamination and death, would indicate that the latter situation would be the most plausible one.

And that means that there are others like Dirie still out there, taking courage in the statements of the Denver police that the case is closed. As the festivities preceding the Democratic Convention are about to begin, the time to take this possibility seriously is now.

There are terrorist cells active throughout the country, using mosques and community centers, coffee houses, homes, and street meetings to develop and carry out their plans. Despite what the Denver police have said, this appears to be far more than a dysfunctional man taking his own life.

There is a pervading opinion among our leaders that Americans need to be protected from uncomfortable and frightening truths. Instead of giving us the opportunity to protect ourselves and our families, they prefer to tell us that everything is okay and under control, even when the threat is real and current. The time to be honest with the American people began a long time ago and the time for concern is now.

11 comments:

Michael Travis said...

Nothing, not even public safety and homeland security, must interfere with the coronation of B.Hussein.O' next week! (The Dhimmicrats have spoken)

Pastorius said...

You know, I wonder if a Muslim set off a nuclear weapon in a major U.S. city, would our government officials tell us it wasn't terrorism?

Anonymous said...

Pastorius: You mean I'm not the only one who noticed that the FBI says that an event has no links to terrorism faster than their agents can even reach the site? It must make their job easy to be able to rule out terrorism so early in the process.

I live in Denver, and we must have cops from 50 different agencies here, yet no one feels safe, either from the crazy protestors or incompetent jackboot cops.

Pastorius said...

Good luck.

I wouldn't want to be in Denver the next couple of weeks.

Pastorius said...

Basically, you're going to be invaded by aliens from the Planet Berkeley.

Pastorius said...

Funny, how the Philosopher Berkeley questioned whether events really happen, or if we just perceive them to happen, so that they only occur in our brains.

Now, the denizens of the town which bear his name carry on in his tradition of solipsistic selfishness and inability to grasp reality.

But, I digress.

nanc said...

HOLY SHIITE, pastorius!

wonder if there are more of them who weren't "tempted" to smell the poison in light of this guy's death?

how can the fbi call this non suspect?

this world is rapidly becoming more and more mysterious.

Anonymous said...

Hmm, you didn't mention the blog comment that makes the cyanide incident more alarming. [In the following comment, "them" refers to Christians.]

"Please don’t talk shit , that man deserves what happened to him , simply because having the bible in one hand , and a bread in the other hand , is not a correct thing ,! Kill Them , Kill them , Kill them , that is my massage,!"

Comment by Abdirahman Dirie — July 11, 2008 @ 10:33 pm

Pastorius said...

I missed that. Where'd you get that from?

Steve Harkonnen said...

Maybe Dirie was merely a decoy. This discovery of Dirie sets the FBI into thinking "good, we saved the day" and then boom, the following day, or two days, something happens at the convention.

Pastorius said...

One of our mutual friends was proposing the same sort of idea the other day.

It is very hard to understand how this guy's body went undicovered (in a luxury hotel where they change the linens every day) for SIX DAYS.

How could that possibly happen?