the North Korea nuke factor, by Stanley Kurtz on NRO

We've just received an incredibly powerful reminder of why we went to war with Saddam Hussein. No, I'm not talking about the election. Iraq's election was an epochal event, and it certainly did bear out one of the key reasons for invading Iraq. But I am talking about today's front page story in The New York Times confirming the likelihood that Libya received materials for its nuclear program from North Korea. The core reason for our invasion of Iraq was to prevent Saddam from developing a nuclear bomb. While our troops did find nuclear facilities in Iraq, they were far less developed than our intelligence had led us to believe. Yet now it turns out that the danger of Saddam Hussein obtaining nuclear weapons was greater than we believed, not less. Our best estimates at the time was that Saddam might be able to develop a nuclear weapon in about five years, give or take a couple of years. There was also the danger that things were more advanced than that. Now it appears that had he not been taken out, Saddam could have obtained nuclear materials from North Korea and easily jump-started his program. Worse, if North Korea has already produced, or will soon produce, numerous finished nuclear weapons, there is the possibility that it will sell finished weapons to terrorists and rogue states. Had Saddam been left in place, he might easily have been able to buy a finished nuke from the Koreans within a shorter time-frame than Kenneth Pollack worried that he could develop nukes on his own. After all, we already know that Saddam purchased missiles from the North Koreans. So this evidence that North Korea has already crossed the red line of exporting nuclear material is a huge development. It shows that the war in Iraq was absolutely justified. It also shows that the axis of evil is really an axis–they cooperate. More important, the Korea news shows that we've still got a terrible problem with WMDs and terror. The Democrats' attempt to discredit this war has been deeply mistaken. The truth is, the war was a first and necessary step to avert the terrible nuclear danger we still face.