100 BIN LADENS?

That's what Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak predicts the war in Iraq will create.

I don't buy this line, but let's stipulate that he's right just for the sake of argument. The war in Iraq does indeed create 100 spoiled petulant rich kids with millions of dollars, the leadership, the connections and the will to become the next generation of Osama bin Ladens. If that happens, the Iraq war would still be worth fighting.

100 Osamas don't equate even 1 Saddam. Osama lacks the status as head-of-state, doesn't sit on the incredible oil reserves, and doesn't command several hundred thousand troops dug in to fight off our attacks. The Afghan campaign proved just how precarious Osama's position was--a few hundred US and allied special forces troops, combined with the rag-tag Northern Alliance and our air power, dislodged Osama from his mountain nests. Now he's either rotting in some bombed-out cave or running for his life.

The difference between an Osama bin Laden and a Saddam Hussein isn't one of intention--they want the same thing--but one of scale. If killing off Saddam creates 100 Osamas, so be it. We'll kill them off one by one, no matter how long it takes. But killing off Saddam, dismantling his global intelligence services, his secret police, his Republican Guard, his fedayeen death squads, wiping out his WMD program, and freeing his people will in the end be worth creating 100 Osamas. And it may yet prevent the creation of even more Osamas that would probably happen if we did nothing.