NICKY ARNSTEIN, NICKY ARNSTEIN...

... what a beautiful, beautiful name. Okay, so maybe I don't like Barbra Streisand's politics, but I really liked the movie"Funny Girl." So sue me. Omar Sharif, the"Hello Gorgeous" Egyptian-Lebanese actor who played Fanny Brice's husband in the film, has shown that he's also pretty astute on Middle Eastern affairs. (Perhaps he learned a thing or two when he played Sherif Ali ibn el Kharish in"Lawrence of Arabia"...)

At the Capri-Hollywood Film & Music Festival, Sharif criticized the Bush administration for attempting to impose democracy in Iraq."The moment the troops leave," he said,"that culture will return to its old tribal governing ways." He adds that if Bush"went to Iraq to achieve a democracy, he was wrong. If he went to Iraq to remove weapons of mass destruction, he was wrong, because there never were any."

Sharif likes the idea that a tyrant was removed from Iraq, but he asks:"So many tyrants in this world, why this one? There is more reason to attack North Korea. And Pakistan has the atomic bomb."

Who said actors know nothing about international politics?