QUOTE OF THE DAY. Next up on the recreational reading list is Losing Bin Laden (details or compare prices.) Commentary later. For now, look at this, from page 12. "Finally, there is no evidence that the CIA ever paid bin Laden. No canceled checks. No contemporary news accounts published in English in any newspaper in the world. Indeed, the earliest article to mention bin Laden (or any variant spelling of his names) appears in a February 1992 edition of The Guardian -- and it does not mention CIA funding. Subsequent congressional and media investigations have turned up nothing. The charges of CIA funding came later -- and with no evidence attached.

"The claim that the CIA somehow supported bin Laden is mostly made by those who opposed President Reagan's support of guerrilla movements to roll back Soviet communism. They had warned that Reagan's strategy would inevitably cause 'blowback,' which they now claim is embodied by bin Laden. Perhaps they hope to use bin Laden to win an argument they lost long ago."