Obama Assassination Attempt: Give Him AIDS

An apparent would-be assassin who mailed Barack Obama a letter smeared with HIV-infected blood was arrested in Chicago yesterday.

There are a few problems with the story, though: the man, an Ethiopian immigrant named Saad Hussein, included his own picture and mailing address in the letter, along with a note saying that the red substance inside was his own blood, infected with the HIV virus.

Also, the letter was mailed to Obama in Springfield, IL, a place where he has not lived or worked since 2004. Oh yeah, and the perpetrator was also arrested in 2006 after setting a fire in the middle of a busy Chicago intersection.

Probably not a vast, organized criminal conspiracy to kill the President ...

Saad Bedrie Hussein told investigators that he is an admirer of Obama and that the letter -- containing his photo, an admission ticket to Obama's election night victory party in Chicago's Grant Park and six index cards containing writing and reddish stains -- was his way of seeking government help and tickets to Obama's inauguration.

Hussein, who has HIV, said he "purposely cut one of his fingers with a razor so he could bleed on the letter," according to an affidavit by Terry L. Cullivan, an investigator with the U.S. Postal Inspection Service.

The letter, postmarked December 27 and written in an Ethiopian language, was addressed to Obama at the Illinois Department on Aging in Springfield, Illinois. When the letter was opened two days later, it was found to contain an orange powder, Cullivan said. A state employee then took the letter to another state office, resulting in a two-hour lockdown of the building, affecting more than 300 people, the affidavit says.

From now on, when Obama stops in Springfield to pick up his old mail, he's going to hold everything up to the light to make sure there's no AIDS in it.