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Welcome Dr. Khalaf, to the New Imperialism. No, not the kind often ascribed to President Bush, but to the sort that lets the fashion leaders of the West decide how billions of people in the Third World live and die -- on a whim. The kind that gave Zimbabwe Robert Mugabe and you Saddam Hussein. The sort that lionized Pol Pot. And still lionizes Fidel Castro and Kim Jong Il.

Do you regret that you are too old to have witnessed a Nazi Nuremberg Rally out of historical interest? Don't despair. Any Peace March will do.

Please don't think, Dr. Khalaf, that you've found civilization by transplanting yourself to the center of London, that you are somehow farther from vileness than your unfortunate relatives in Iraq. It's there, Dr. Khalaf, sandaled, organically fed and full of hate. Do you know that the most dangerous men in the Nazi death camps weren't the illiterate Ukrainian guards? It was the polished men and women who listened to Beethoven and thought the screams of the damned were so artistically contrapuntal.