Maybe It's Time For An Intervention

I had a dear friend once who stayed with an abusive drunk long after any of the rest of us could figure out WTF was going on. I confronted her about it once and she told me, essentially, that although she knew that he "could be" (aka "was") abusive to her, she believed that he would always "protect" her from "anyone else." Of course, it was a form of mental illness, and, thank the Goddess, her women friends eventually convinced her to leave him and get some counseling.

I guess that I'm reminded of this incident by the "Security Moms" on my street -- otherwise smart and creative women who tell me that they don't like anything much at all about George Bush, but that they voted for him because they trusted him (and in most cases, still do) to "keep them safe" from "terrorists." These are not idiots, nor was my friend. Like her, (at least, at first, she was like this) they have college degrees, current interests, active lives, lots of moxie.

Well, today's NYT ought to function for them the same way that our (several) interventions functioned for my friend. George Bush has made life more dangerous for all of us. For me, for you, for the adorable children of the Security Moms on my street -- the cute, well-behaved kids who sell me Girl Scout cookies, collect canned good from me for the homeless, borrow my Slip-n-Slide (Atriots, you know who you are), and wave to me when I slowly drive by their games of street lacrosse.

A stark assessment of terrorism trends by American intelligence agencies has found that the American invasion and occupation of Iraq has helped spawn a new generation of Islamic radicalism and that the overall terrorist threat has grown since the Sept. 11 attacks.

The classified National Intelligence Estimate attributes a more direct role to the Iraq war in fueling radicalism than that presented either in recent White House documents or in a report released Wednesday by the House Intelligence Committee, according to several officials in Washington involved in preparing the assessment or who have read the final document.

Women. For the love of the fruit of your own sweet wombs. Vote for a Congress and Senate that will put the brakes on this madman who endangers all of us. Vote Democratic in November.