On Jan. 29, 2002, President George W. Bush declared that Iran, Iraq and North Korea form an "Axis of Evil." Almost immediately (and predictably), Bush was reproached by European leaders and ultra-liberal college campuses like our own. They claimed that not only are these three countries not an axis of evil but that Bush's speech also lacked political tact. It was a cheap shot. However, they forget that Iraq and Iran routinely massacre their own citizens, sometimes for no reason other than their political or religious views. They forget that North Korea starves its own citizens while expending huge sums on its weapons programs. And, finally, they forget that all three countries pose a large and immediate threat to U.S. security at home and overseas.

Iraq's biological, chemical and nuclear weapon programs have made it a significant threat for decades. By 1990, Iraq had produced 25 missile warheads and 166 400-pound aerial bombs that were filled with anthrax, botulinum toxin or aflatoxin. The threat of Iraqi biological warfare has never been greater. Further, Iraq has historically made effective use of chemical warfare. During the Iran-Iraq war, Iraq murdered 5,000 civilians in a chemical weapon attack on the Kurdish town of Halabja. U.N. weapons inspectors partly dismantled both Iraq's biological and chemical weapon programs following the Gulf War, but Saddam's refusal to allow those inspectors back for the past three years has reignited suspicion that Iraq is rebuilding its arsenals.

Saddam Hussein, vice president of Iraq in the early 1970s, began Iraq's nuclear weapons program. The rest of the world turned a blind eye and the Israelis, Hussein's likely first target, took matters into their own hands, destroying the nuclear reactor in a 1981 air strike. Baghdad persisted, however, and by the 1991 Gulf War, it could have been only one to three years away from developing a nuclear weapon and the means to deliver it. Since then, Iraq has suffered under the weight of U.N. sanctions and has suffered a major setback in its weapons development programs, but the absence of U.N. weapons inspectors could very well mean that those programs are back in full force.

Iraq does not only pose a grave threat to the civilized world, but also to its own citizens. The Iraqi government regularly murders political dissenters and has killed thousands of its own citizens with poison gas. Despite these facts, leaders from around the world, as well as our own politicians, condemn Bush's inclusion of Iraq in the "Axis of Evil." If Iraq doesn't deserve to be labeled evil, who does?

Iran is also heavily invested in weapons programs. With assistance from North Korea, China and Russia, Iran can now produce scud missiles domestically and is working towards the production of nuclear weapons. Given Iran's publicly hostile stance towards the United States, this poses a real problem. In addition, Iran supports groups such as Hamas, Hezbollah and Islamic Jihad. Iranian intelligence regularly meets with these groups and supplies them with weaponry. Most notably, Iran has been implicated in various weapons smuggling schemes with the Palestinians. Those weapons are invariably used for terrorist attacks against Israeli civilians. Reports suggest that Yasser Arafat, a terrorist in all but name, coordinates these weapons shipments. Thus, much like Iraq, if Iran is not evil, who is?

Evidence suggests that the threat from North Korea is even greater than that of Iraq and Iran. From the 1960s until the late 1980s, North Korea engaged in various acts of international terrorism. In 1969, North Koreans hijacked a domestic airliner in South Korea and brought 51 passengers to the north as captives. Twelve are still prisoners. In January of 1983, North Korean agents made an assassination attempt on South Korean president Chun Doo-Hwan, killing 17 dignitaries and wounding 14 others. However, the nation has not directly sponsored terrorism since 1988, when North Korean agents demolished a South Korean airliner, killing 115 civilians. But North Korea still remains on the State Department's list of state sponsors of terrorism, largely because of its relatively new role as a proliferator of weapons of mass destruction.

The DPRK (Democratic People's Republic of Korea) starves its own citizens while spending over 14 percent of its gross domestic product on its military. The U.S., in contrast, spends only six percent of its GDP on military spending. North Korea's massive and irresponsible military expenditures have wrecked its economy to the point that the nation relies on international aid just to feed its own people. How does the country rectify this problem? Instead of decreasing military expenditures, North Korea sells weapons to the terrorist nations of Iran, Iraq and Libya. It seems that North Korea wishes to become a world vendor of weapons of mass destruction, an unacceptable occupation when its customers hail from such noxious regimes as Iran, Iraq and Libya. Even more frightening is the new evidence that links North Korea to terrorist organizations such as the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, the United Wa State Army and even Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda. Reports suggest that the DPRK regularly markets weapons to these groups and North Koreans have even been seen training alongside al-Qaeda members in Afghanistan (along with our own John Walker Lindh).

Bush was accurate to include North Korea in his "Axis of Evil." The nation represents a large and immediate threat to U.S. interests abroad and overseas. Terrorism is a regional phenomenon. These cold, callous attacks on innocent civilians, designed to inspire terror, are limited to a few countries, most notably those included in Bush's "Axis of Evil." Those countries are and should be the next target in the war against terrorism.