WASHINGTON -- When a dramatist places a gun on the table in the first act,
the astute playgoer knows that the weapon will be used before the drama ends.

In his State of the Union address, President Bush warned three nations
sponsoring terror - North Korea, Iran and Iraq - that the U.S. "will not permit
the world's most dangerous regimes to threaten us with the world's most
destructive weapons."

That means he has decided to destroy the destructive potential of the most
dangerous states before any of them can credibly threaten to wipe out a U.S.
city or infect our nation with an epidemic. Bush's refusal "to leave terror states
unchecked" leaves only secondary decisions: when and how to attack "the axis
of evil" (an apt allusion to the Berlin-Rome-Tokyo axis of World War II).

In ascending order of pre-emptive priority:

North Korea is "a regime arming with missiles and weapons of mass
destruction"; we have been paralyzed by South Korea's fear of renewed
invasion despite our intelligence indicating the North's secret nuclear buildup.

The South's capital, near the border, is vulnerable to long-range artillery. This
could be countered by shipment to the South of advanced counter-artillery capable of tracking the trajectory of "incoming," thereby nullifying an artillery-backed assault on Seoul. Our B-52's could then take out Kim Jong Il's key nuclear bomb-making sites, which he now adamantly refuses to permit International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors to see.

Iran is secretly building nuclear bombs with Russia's help. It supplies and
controls the Hezbollah terrorists in Lebanon, and just escalated its war on
infidels by shipping 50 tons of rockets, C-4 terror explosive and other arms to
Yasir Arafat's army to kill more Israeli civilians.

These acts have exploded the myth, long embraced by wishful thinkers at our
State Department, of a "moderate" ayatollah supposedly resisting the hot-eyed
fundamentalists. That rosy scenario of rapprochement was sunk with the
capture of the Iranian-Palestinian terror ship.

The Bush strategy to deal with Iranian theocrats sponsoring terror: Continue
our isolation of them and encourage - with open broadcasts and clandestine
support - the growing spirit of rebellion among repressed Iranians. This hunger
for freedom has been expressed not only by soccer fans applauding America,
but in candlelight vigils of 20,000 young Iranians unafraid of photographs by
clerical police. A revolution is brewing, and we should be on the right side of it.

Should intelligence reveal a nuclear danger from Tehran coming onstream,
however, a surgical airstrike would be called for. Saving our lives comes
before winning their hearts and minds.

Iraq, of course, is the most immediate target. Because Saddam Hussein has
dispersed his nuclear facilities and placed his germ warfare plants in such
places as the basement of the Baghdad hospital, airstrikes alone won't meet the
threat.

Despite C.I.A. chief George Tenet's dislike of the leaders of the anti-Saddam
Iraqi National Congress, and despite furious posterior-covering by Brent Scowcroft and Colin Powell, our wartime president has evidently decided to force a change of regime in Baghdad.

To avoid certain military defeat, Saddam is likely to send Tariq Aziz out with
"inspection feelers" to the U.N. Six months of negotiation about who (other
than spying Americans) would be on the inspection teams would be followed
by six months of misleading the inspectors, by which time Saddam would have
his deadly weapons - and would thereby tip the strategic balance in terror's
favor.

If Bush follows words with deeds, he will avert that disaster. Instead he will
apply his Afghan template: Supply arms and money to 70,000 Kurdish fighters
in northern Iraq and a lesser Shiite force in the south, covering both with
Predator surveillance and tactical U.S. air support.

In Phase II, I'll bet it was recently agreed in Washington that Turkish tank
brigades and U.S. Special Ops troops will together thrust down to Baghdad. Saddam will join Osama and Mullah Omar in hiding. Iraqis, cheering their liberators, will lead the Arab world toward democracy.

It's not a pipe dream. It's the action implicit in the Bush doctrine enunciated this week. The gun laid on the table by this political dramatist will go off in the next act.