Remember Denver

Right before last year's Democratic National Convention a Canadian man of Somali descent was found dead in a Denver hotel with a secret:

If Saleman Abdirahman Dirie intended to do harm with the sodium cyanide found in his Denver hotel room, he could have done a lot of it.

Firefighters said Wednesday that Dirie, whose body was found Monday, had a pound of the substance in Room 408 at the Burnsley All Suite Hotel in Capitol Hill, and an expert said that if it were mixed with acid, that would be plenty enough to function as a weapon.

We never heard much more about that story, such as who or what killed him. Initial reports said it wasn't the cyanide. Hmm, maybe it was a pirate. Anyway, it's not every day that cyanide makes the news but such was the case this past week with the confession of captured terrorist (and leftist cause celebre) Saleh al-Marri:

Al-Marri also surfed the Internet to research cyanide gas, using software to cover his tracks, according to the document filed Thursday in federal court in Peoria, Ill. He marked the locations of dams, waterways and tunnels in the United States in an almanac. The government claims this reflects intelligence that al-Qaida was planning to use cyanide gas to attack those sites.

Surely just a coincidence. Nice to know that due to Bush correctly treating him as the dangerous terrorist the government had to plea bargain him down to probably no more than 10 years (including time served) to prevent his outright release due to an interpretation of the meaning of enemy combatant.