Al-Marri Free

Ali Saleh al-Marri was once a trusted sleeper for the enemy of the United States of America.  He entered the country before 9/11 on a student Visa and used the web to research cyanide along with locations of dams, waterways and tunnels.  By the way, for those who think researching dams isn't a big deal anymore, refer to this case.

He was picked up in December 2001 and later named an enemy combatant by the Bush torturers. ACLU types eventually got him into the criminal system and in the first year of the Obama administration a federal judge sentenced him to 8 years and time served (in the Bushco gulags).  Using the new math that means he's now free as a bird, back home in Qatar (pronounced gutter).

In 2009 the AP's Pamela Hess reported on his previous life as follows:

After arriving in the U.S. on Sept. 10, 2001, a day before al-Qaida's long-plotted terror strikes in New York and Washington, Al-Marri stored phone numbers of al-Qaida associates in a personal electronic device.

He used a "10-code" to protect the numbers, subtracting the actual digits in the phone numbers from 10 to arrive at a coded number, according to a person close to the investigation. In a 10-code, eight becomes a two, for example. Other al-Qaida members used the same code, according to the plea agreement.

Al-Marri sent e-mails to Khalid Sheikh Mohammed's hotmail account, HOR70@hotmail.com, addressed to "Muk" and signed "Abdo." The details of that code were included in an address book found in an al-Qaida safehouse in Pakistan.

An attempt by The Associated Press to reach that address did not indicate the account had been closed, but it went unanswered. Al-Marri initially tried to use a Yahoo e-mail account to contact Mohammed, but it failed to go through. So he switched to Hotmail as well.

When al-Marri arrived in the United States, he created five new e-mail accounts to communicate with Mohammed, using the 10-code to send him his cell phone number in Peoria. From September to November, al-Marri tried and failed to contact members of al-Qaida in Pakistan using prepaid calling cards and public phones, sometimes traveling 160 miles to use a different phone.

While he might seem more bumbler than Bond, he spent 3 years training in terror camps to pull off an attack and use codes, then entered the States content on helping facilitate an attack--after 9/11.  The History Commons site has a lot of information on al-Marri's alleged infractions, including a comment made about him by KSM..

He will describe al-Marri as “the perfect sleeper agent because he has studied in the United States, had no criminal record, and had a family with whom he could travel.”

After being picked up he cried a lot about missing that family while apologizing and renouncing violence because Islam is a peaceful religion, which tends to sway the squishies who consider Bush-Cheney the real terrorists.  So now, only a week or so after Paris, he's back in the Middle East, no harm, no foul.  For those who continue to wonder about the Obama doctrine, this is basically it.