The Axis of Evil
And that is how North Korea scored its slot on the list: The US basically needs to know what weapons and nuclear capabilities North Korea has and when it got them and why it wants them. When those questions are answered, North Korea will not be able to use those weapons.
And how did Iran make the list? Simply said, Iran is a very confused country now. Support for the radical Islamic revolution led by Ayatollah Khomeni seemed to die with the Ayatollah. The quasi-elected President seems to want to bring Iran into a more collaborative arrangement with the West, but there in the back rooms where all the deals are done in Teheran sit the successors of the Ayatollah - the same people who continue to organize those "death to America" rallies. It is quite conceivable in some regard that Iran could harbor terrorists. The country has given financial and weapons support to terrorist groups in Lebanon and Sudan and other countries and has proudly and publicly taken credit for those policies. How convenient for the Al-Qaeda survivors to slink across the border into Iran - a country with whom the US has had very limited diplomatic relations during the last two decades.
There is no need to elaborate why Iraq made the Axis list. Like North Korea, the Iraqi government holds its power only as a consequence of the terror it inflicts on its people. Since the Baath Party seized power, most Iraqis have opposed that regime. If free elections were held, the Baath Party and Mr. Hussein would be voted out by an astounding margin - which is one reason the country has not held free or quasi-free elections since the 1950s. Despite the rhetoric from US diplomats that: "We hope the Iraqi people will revolt and replace their government themselves", such a revolt is quite impossible without vast amounts of external support. As the 1991 Gulf War demonstrated, most Iraqi conscript soldiers have no desire to fight the US; they would prefer to join the US to fight the Hussein hierarchy. Therefore Iraq will probably be a much simpler military campaign than is generally perceived.
But to return to the original question, what makes North Korea, Iran, and Iraq the worst of the worst states in respect of supporting terrorism? Why not add Syria, Sudan, Yemen, Libya, and all the other states whose governments simply ignore the reality that terrorist groups
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