It sometimes pays to be skeptical. Some of us seem to have been a mite too eager to believe that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction ready to be unleashed. And who knows? Perhaps more searches will find them.
On the other hand I wonder what Loren Jenkins, senior foreign editor of National Public Radio, has been doing since September 11, 2001. In a "Salon" article written in August 1998 he asked "Is Osama Bin Laden a terorist master-mind or a fall guy?" He opted for the latter, saying:
Unless the Clinton administration can come up with some hard evidence that bin Laden is in fact calling the shots of a vast new anti-American terrorist network, all the present allegations and faceless intelligence-source leaks claiming facts too secret and explosive to be revealed should be taken with a grain of salt.
Bin Laden may be a dangerous anti-American zealot with a mouth as big as his bankroll. But the evidence so far does not support him being a cerebral Islamic Dr. No moving an army of terrorist troops on a vast world chessboard to checkmate the United States.
Since 1998 Loren has become infamous for a number of outrageous statements on the war against terrorism but I have yet to see an acknowledgement from him about being so wrong about Bin Laden.