So how about that axis?

Tucked away at the bottom of a piece from June:

Foreign policy analyst John Loftus told Fox News that the "diplomatic solution" could involve preventing trade out of Iran and North Korea, which intelligence sources say has been sending enriched uranium to Iran.
"We're going to use a little persuasion. In the last week, virtually every carrier group in the United States Navy has been ordered to put to sea and they're heading in two directions — one for the Arabian peninsula and the other into the Pacific. Now, just by coincidence, the largest maritime exercise in military history, RIMPAC, Operation Pacific Rim, will take place off the coast of Hawaii in August...
"In August, they will have finished their exercise and they'll be within easy sailng distance of the Korean peninsula...

Assuming that the naval deployments have gone as expected, it would be clear from actions that contingencies are being planned for. The phrase axis of evil has been remarkably absent from US election campaign rhetoric.

While I'm at it, here's two countries to worry about: Nepal and Uzbekistan.

The US plans to boost its troop presence in Uzbekistan as a "lily pad", as well as Poland and Romania. However, the Uzbek government is confronting a low intensity insurgency of Islamic militants, complete with suicide bombers.

In Nepal, Maoist rebels have laid siege to the capital. In Maoist doctrine, taking cities would be the final phase, after having secured the countryside.

Time reported in September 2003:

They say they are now embarked on the final phase of Mao's revolutionary timetable: eliminating all enemies of the revolution, bringing a terrorized capital to its knees and, eventually, overrunning the city and seizing power. "We control all the countryside," gloats Maoist political officer Ram Lohani Chaudhray. "The government and most of the army hide in Kathmandu. But we have many fighters there. We have them holed up and we will wipe them out."

Is this the endgame, as they say?