Are these the "noble Iraqi people"?

Drumming their chests and whipping their backs, hundreds of thousands of Iraqi Shi'ite Muslims swarmed through the holy city of Kerbala on Tuesday on a pilgrimage suppressed for decades by Saddam Hussein. Marking one of the most important events of their year, some men slashed their heads with knives and left bloody wounds in a ritual display of readiness to die for Imam Hussein, grandson of the Prophet Mohammad. The imam was killed in Kerbala in AD 680.

Are these the "noble Iraqi people"? If we really want a peaceful Middle East, it's time to bring some of that eeevil western imperialism (read: secularism and private property) to Iraq, rather than allowing rabid Islamic fundamentalists to spew their religiously motivated hatred of rights, reason, and reality. Liberals have it all wrong: they blame the conservatives for their "colonialism" but Bush, with his new-age Christianity, will never understand that the true nature of the conflict is western secularism vs. religious fundamentalism.