When bombs from two F-16 fighter jets destroyed an isolated house in an orange grove northeast of Baghdad Wednesday night, they cut down the elusive leader of al-Qaida in Iraq, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.

In the late afternoon skies over Iraq, a pair of F-16C pilots were "in the orbit," as the Air Force calls it, cruising through a routine patrol Wednesday that was about to become anything but.

The man who terrorized Iraq for three years got his start the same way many of today's leading Islamic militants did: he was a foot soldier in the CIA-backed jihad against the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan in the 1980s.

So what about killing bin Laden?