dla:

o, you also mentioned that :
>helped dry up Al-Qaeda funding

The Terrorist Financing Problem
One of the major targets identified by President Bush when he first declared our war on terrorism is the terrorist financial support networks. To date, we have seized or frozen about $150 million in supporting assets. Is this good news, or bad? The revenues attributed to the Taliban and al-Qaeda, circa 9-11, were variously estimated to be in the $2 to $4 billion range, much from drug trafficking. They are not the only enemy. The war on terrorism includes all terrorists, including those in the Middle East, which have traditionally used drug trafficking as a source of their support. Even more important are terrorists close at hand in, for example, Colombia and other Latin American countries where there are terrorist organizations, such as Peru, Brazil, Bolivia, and Mexico. The two major terrorist groups in Colombia alone could have drug trafficking revenues in the billions of dollars, given the amount of cocaine, heroin, and other drugs that come out of or through that region.

So what’s wrong? Why have we seized only $150 million? Perhaps there is another issue here worthy of the Commission’s scrutiny. The flow of the terrorist support money is not just important because of its operational need but equally well because of what the flow tells us about terrorist organizations and people. Changes in the flow can signal upcoming events. Odds are that the 9-11 Commission will not address the lack of progress in tracking down terrorist financial supports and participating banks and other financial institutions and networks. This network and our evident ability to trap only $150 million is a significant and continuing failure. Its importance to waging war and anticipating additional attacks is why it was singled out for special effort when the war on terrorism began.

http://www.financialsense.com/editorials/douglass/2004/0330.html