I was wondering the same thing
Ben Stein asks in the American Prowler, Iraq and North Korea in Cahoots?

A simple but frightening conjecture: What if Iraq and North Korea are working together?

Let's start with the obvious. Just as American plans to invade Iraq were hitting high gear, scraping together armed forces, active and reserves, to make a powerful fighting force to take Baghdad, what should happen? North Korea springs into action against the United States and the United Nations. Pyongyang defies U.N. agreements about restricting nuclear technology, brings forbidden weapons into the DMZ, threatens nuclear attack against the U.S. and our allies in the region.

This has to affect U.S. war plans. If there is even a slightly good chance that the Communist North will attack South Korea or use nuclear weapons even in a test, the U.S. will have to split up our already too-thin forces between Iraq and faraway Korea. This drastically complicates our ability to concentrate forces against Saddam.

Is this possibly a coincidence? Well, of course, possibly it is. Anything is possible. But North Korea and Iraq are already closely linked militarily. North Korea has been a major supplier of forbidden missile technology and presumably Scud missiles themselves to Iraq. That link is already established. North Korea is chronically short of money because of its insane economic policies and the costs of maintaining an army of over one million in a small country. Iraq is immensely rich from oil. It is well within the realm of possibility that Iraq simply paid North Korea to stir the pot in the Far East just as Iraq was feeling vulnerable so that Iraq might win some sort of respite from U.S. attentions.

It is the Axis of Evil after all. And it doesn't help that

As a result of the relentless cutting, year after year, by the Clinton-Gore White House, America's defense forces are now missing 709,000 regular (active duty) service personnel and 293,000 reserve troops. These include eight standing Army divisions, 20 Air Force and Navy air wings with 2,000 combat aircraft and 232 strategic bombers, 13 strategic ballistic missile submarines with 3,114 nuclear warheads, 500 ICBMs, four aircraft carriers, 121 surface combat ships and submarines, plus all the support bases, shipyards and logistical assets needed to sustain such a force.

These figures do not even include the equipment inoperable for lack of spare parts in a military drained of resources because of overdeployment and underfunding. For example, there is an entire "paper" wing (four squadrons of 18 planes each) of F-16s that is being carried as "administratively reassigned" to Langley Air Force Base in Virginia. These planes are actually sitting on the side of a runway, in plain view. They have been cannibalized for spare parts.

On top of the equipment and personnel gaps, there has been a steep decline in the morale of enlisted men and women as a result of the reckless overdeployment of U.S. forces under the Clinton-Gore command. How reckless? From 1945 to 1991 -- years when the United States was in a Cold War with the Soviet Union -- U.S. armed forces were deployed exactly 10 times. In the eight years between 1992 and the present, U.S. forces have been deployed 33 times. These deployments were for "peacekeeping," humanitarian aid, nation building and other essentially nonmilitary purposes. Their cost has been underwritten by the regular military budget, depleting monies that were earmarked for maintenance, research and the development of new military technologies.

Not to mention Bubba firing off million dollar plus cruise missiles every time he got caught with his pants down and then not buying new ones.

Back to Ben Stein for the payoff:

As a nation, we have allowed our strength to ebb under the delusion that the world was a much safer place than it is. Now, let's grit our teeth and pay for the defense we need ... starting with decent pay for our armed forces. Nations do not pass from the scene because they have too much defense, and if we have to err, let us err on that side. Defense is our greatest priority. We neglected it terribly in the Clinton years. Now is the time to rebuild our strength, and it is not a moment too soon. If North Korea and Iraq can work together -- just a hunch at this point -- then so can all of our enemies, and we need to be strong enough to deal with them all. We can afford it. The only thing we can not afford is to fail to defend ourselves.

And screw the whiners.