I think it's a fair question, and I would agree, Iran and N. Korea could potentially be seen as a greater threat to the U.S. than Iraq. On one hand, we have Iran, who has been an enemy of the U.S. for some time, but has pretty much stayed out of our business. I think we've shown in the past that we can live peacefully with enemies. The big fear though are unstable governments or governments with loose cannons at the helm.
So with North Korea and Iraq, this is what I see. It's virtually impossible IMO to wage a war on N. Korea, at least without causing WW3. In a sense, the same is true with Iran, especially since they have (or soon will have) nukes, not to mention biological and chemical weapons.
So I see Iraq as low-hanging fruit which can be used as leverage against these other countries. It's real easy to think the U.S. won't do anything when it never acts on its words. I don't think Saddam really expected us to invade Iraq, and to be quite honest, I didn't think Bush had the guts to do something like that. But in the end, we were able to prove that we back up our words with action, we defeated a dangerous dictator, and we're currently attempting to spread democracy in a dangerous region of the world.
Think about it, if Iraq can go democratic, and Afghanistan, this could have a huge influence on the region--particularly Iran. What if this could encourage a civil war within Iran, or cause thousands and thousands of civilians to leave Iran for freedom?
I'm not saying it will happen, but it's an interesting experiment that I think is worth the price, primarily because of the other advantages of defeating Iraq.
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