"The cost of this may well go beyond the effect on the heroin shipments.

When we sat down this week with Amin Tarzi, director of Middle East Studies at the Marine Corps University and a native Afghan, he said that the United States has lost credibility with the Afghan populace by allying itself with warlords who have been known across Afghanistan for many years as criminals. We have, he says, handed a golden issue to the Taliban. They first took power in the 1990's by charging that the existing government was corrupt. Now they can say it again.

(Steve Inskeep co-hosts Morning Edition. This is the first in a series of "recommended reading" posts we plan that highlight stories NPR hosts have heard, read or seen that they think are worth noting.)"

When you realise that the CIA are indirectly (plausible deniability) responsible for Al Qaeda's actions,and that Bin Laden was and still is a CIA asset, who was sent in by them during the cold war to destabilise Russia, then it makes a