Paranoid? Or Prescient about Psychology?

Today when I opened my copy of the Kansas City Star, a K-Mart ad fell out that took my breath away. It was for Halloween costumes, and a Crusader was one of the featured costumes in the ad. My blood ran cold at the sight of the chain mail and the griffin on the breast. If it had sported a big red cross, I truly believe I would have had a stroke, right there on the spot.

Some of my husbands peers, officers who elected to resign commissions and retire early, have been calling the permanent bases in Iraq "Crusader Castles" for a while now. They have been drawing the parallel between the mediaeval crusades and the current war tearing asunder the cradle of civilization. They don't respect this president and they quite frankly think he is a fool and an idiot. He has called it a crusade, not knowing the consequences of his choice of words.

The crusades were a dark period of our european history, and not a chapter we should want to repeat. I would encourage anyone with a sketchy knowledge of that time in history to brush up a bit and then look at what we are doing in Iraq after the scales have fallen away from the eyes.

Now crusader costumes being hawked for halloween at K-Mart?

Maybe I am paranoid, but that doesn't mean I am unjustified in being so...