Onward to Iraq

It's time to start talking about Iraq.

The northern alliance is capturing key Taliban strongholds all over Afghanistan. From Mazar-e Sharif to Kabul, women are walking into the streets with their faces uncovered for the first time in years.

We should not delude ourselves into thinking that the northern alliance is all that more decent than the Taliban soldiers they fight. Summary executions and rape join a long list of other human rights violations committed by the northern alliance over the years. The reason northern alliance soldiers are our boys is simple: The enemy of our enemy is our friend. But they are our boys for now, and they are winning.

Unfortunately, there is no northern alliance in Iraq. The Iraqi people are too weak to serve as a force against Saddam Hussein. That's unfortunate because Iraq should be our next target, and it would be nice if there were some support on the ground when we got there.

The Bush administration has kept its lips sealed on Iraq. But at no time have operations in Iraq been ruled out by an administration official. At no time has the administration ruled out Iraq as a state sponsor of terrorism. Iraq has the motivation (that is, Hussein considers the Gulf War ongoing, say former Iraqi soldiers) and the means (that is, nuclear and chemical weapons) to do America devastating harm.

The Taliban guarded and protected al-Qaida, but it's not unlikely Hussein played a more active role in supporting terrorism. Simply put, an event the magnitude of Sept. 11 could not have been planned and executed outside the awareness of Saddam Hussein.

Reports of Iraq's involvement are slipping past the media freeze the administration has employed in its war on terrorism. Two former soldiers in Iraq's army — both of whom defected to the United States a few years ago — recently said in an interview that they had seen soldiers from all over the Middle East training in Iraqi military camps. They said that they didn't know who the Mideast soldiers were or why they were training there but that their presence was a guarded secret.

The Czech interior minister recently said Mohammed Atta, one of the ringleaders of Sept. 11, met with an Iraqi intelligence officer in Prague only months before the attack on the World Trade Center.

Neither of these examples is proof of Iraq's involvement in the September attack. But both suggest an Iraqi connection to Islamic fundamentalist terrorism if not to Sept. 11 itself. If Iraq is a state sponsor of al-Qaida or any other terrorist group, that makes it a necessary target in the war on terrorism.

The solution to the Iraq problem is clear but difficult: Eliminate Hussein. He holds firm power unlike the Taliban, whose power was contested by the northern alliance long before the United States showed up. Eliminating Hussein will end a potential — if not proved — threat of state-sponsored terrorism against the United States.

We've been avoiding the subject of Iraq for almost a decade. We tried to ignore U.S. air raids on Iraq during the Clinton years. We tried to brush aside warnings that Iraq was developing nuclear and chemical weapons. In the wake of Sept. 11, we need to get serious about the threat posed by Hussein. Adam Frankel is a Wilson School major from New York. He can be reached at afrankel@princeton.edu.