'Antiterror' Fund Carries a Small Stick

"The point is well taken," he says. "But we decided not to go beyond the four countries that the State Department has sanctioned, because we felt we were getting into a gray area."

"It's certainly bothersome on one level," he adds. "A lot of those nations have very questionable practices at best. But we don't want to get involved in that political debate. There's a lot of subjectivity [involved]." Using the State Department's narrow screen, he says, "is not perfect, but it is concrete."

The second point is that the screen can catch activities that are, at best, tangential to the war against al Qaeda. Coke(KO Quote) falls afoul of the screen because some of the cans it sells in China then get resold to North Koreans.

The third: Our enemy isn't one state or four. al Qaeda draws its support from shadowy networks stretching around the world, most obviously in North Africa, the Middle East and Southern Asia. As President Bush said, money is "the lifeblood" of terrorist organizations.

And arguably the best antiterror investment you could make is to hit al Qaeda where it really hurts -- in their petrodollars. The terror network's financing comes out of the vast stream of oil money flowing into countries around the Middle East.

Reality: At $56 a barrel, Iran receives $150 million a day from its oil exports. A day. Saudi Arabia: Half a billion dollars a day. Yep.