Osama bin Laden is either dead or on the run, but the thousands of terrorists who trained in his camps remain a continuing threat. Their “sleeper” cells have blended into community life in countries around the world, including the United States, awaiting only directives and financing to strike again. Tracking them down and ferreting them out stands as the main task immediately ahead for the American-led anti-terror coalition.

Some members of Congress and the Bush administration, egged on by a number of newspaper columnists, academicians and think-tank specialists, urge a different priority. They are pressing for the United States to go to war right now against Iraq. They are correct in calling Saddam Hussein a dangerous threat as he works to rebuild his nuclear and biological weapons of mass destruction. They are correct that he and his government must be destroyed before that region and American national interests can be secure. But they are wrong in their timing.

Attacking Iraq now would interfere with the more urgent and supported requirement of mobilizing military, police and intelligence forces around the world to wipe out terrorist networks outside Iraq. It would risk breaking up the coalition that backed the action in Afghanistan and already has made a good start in fingering terrorist cells and cutting off their financing. Taking on Iraq would require a major U.S. invasion, far greater than the largely proxy action that overthrew the Taliban in Afghanistan.

The two dissident Kurdish groups in Iraq lack the strength and determination than enabled the northern alliance to begin the destruction of the Taliban.

European and Middle Eastern allies seem to have no stomach for a return to the Gulf War that ended with Mr. Hussein still in place.

Those who are pressing for a prompt war against Iraq have tried but failed to connect him with the Sept. 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Investigators have tried in vain to show that Mr. Hussein supplied the al-Qaida conspiracy with weapons or know-how. And they have failed to trace any of the anthrax letters to Iraq. Mr. bin Laden has demonstrated that he needed no sponsorship by Iraq or any other of the so-called rogue states to construct his system of semi-independent terrorist cells. Their organizational pattern resembles a global multinational corporation and requires no state support except for a place to roost, some disorganized country such as Afghanistan and now perhaps Somalia or Sudan.

Planning for the future of the campaign against international terrorism will involve congressional debate and the national military budget. President Bush’s State of the Union address should point the way it will carry on. The wise course will continue to put first things first, leaving Saddam for later and concentrating on the immediate threat of the terrorist network.