The AP reports that the US invasion of Afghanistan put an end to a nascent al-Qaeda WMD program:

An Al-Qaida program to develop chemical and biological weapons was in the early "conceptual stages" when it was cut short by the U.S.-led invasion of Afghanistan, U.S. and Malaysian security officials said. The information on the state of Osama bin Laden's weapons plan came from [interrogations] of terrorist suspects captured in Southeast Asia and from clues gathered in the Afghan battlefield, the authorities said.

And where did these people come from? One of them studied in the US as a biochemist:

Yazid graduated from the University of California, Sacramento, in 1987. But after returning to Malaysia, he began attending classes run by Hambali, a charismatic preacher, and became one of scores of Malaysians and Indonesians recruited to his radical form of Islam in the mid-1990s.

Yazid, 40, spent time in an Al-Qaida training camp in Afghanistan and became a key Jemaah Islamiyah member in Malaysia. He is accused of allowing top Al-Qaida operatives -- including two eventual Sept. 11 hijackers -- to use an apartment he owned for meetings in Malaysia in January 2000 and gave Sept. 11 suspect Zacarias Moussaoui a letter of employment that helped him enter the United States.

Interesting. Another example of why we need to be a bit more picky about foreigners who come to study potentially dangerous fields at our universities, or at least keep better track of those who do. This should demonstrate also that al-Qaeda indeed was attempting to develop catastrophic weapons and capability, and that they do not confine themselves to international borders. Had we waited to pursue law-enforcement solutions to 9/11, much worse would have awaited us.

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