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| Joe Kent |
Kudos to Joe Kent for resigning his position as director of National Counterterrorism Center and doing it with such PR flair via a post on X to maximize the publicity value. His post blindsided the White HOuse and was read by 70M people in the first day.
Though the resignation comes too late—18 days after the invasion began—Kent “cannot in good conscience support the ongoing war in Iran” since it “posed no imminent threat to our nation.”
Kent is certainly no dove. He’s a former Green Beret who served 11 combat missions and lost his wife Shannon, a Navy cryptologic technician, in a bombing in Syria.
He cannot support risking the lives of the next generation of warriors “to die in a war that serves no benefit to the American people nor justifies the cost of American lives.”
Where Kent goes wrong is blaming Israel and its powerful American lobby for banging the drums of war and nudging Trump into combat.
He claims “high-ranking Israeli officials and influential members of the American media deployed a misinformation campaign” that duped the American president.
That’s bunk. Israel is the junior partner in its relationship with the US.
Trump went to war because he envisioned a quick knockout blow similar to the operation in Venezuela. He also needed a major distraction from the Epstein Files.
Trump could have told Israel prime minister Bibi Netanyahu to bug off. Iran is Trump’s “war of choice,” not Bibi’s.
Kent’s salvos at Israel distract from his priority point that Iran did not pose a threat to the US. His letter of resignation is diminished by cheap shots at Israel and its “echo chamber.”
Kent writes that Trump can still do the right thing. “The time for bold action is now. You can reverse course and chart a new path for our nation, or you can allow us to slip further toward decline and chaos.”
It’s time to declare victory in Iran, a move that would piss off Netanyahu who is eager to wipe the Islamic Republic off the face of the map.
Pope Leo urged journalists not to turn their war coverage into a video game and to avoid becoming a “megaphone for power.”
During his March 16 talk to Italian TV reporters, Leo said “information must guard against the risk of turning into propaganda.”
He said the media’s job is “to show the suffering that war always brings to populations, to show the face of war, and to tell it through the eyes of the victims so that it does not turn into a video game.”
The Chicago-born pope echoed the March 11 message of Windy City archbishop Blasé Cupich. He took issue with the White House video that spliced scenes from action movies with footage from the carnage in Iran. The video is captioned: JUSTICE: THE AMERICAN WAY.
The National Constitution Center will award Pope Leo its Liberty Medal on July 3 during a ceremony at Independence Hall.
It honors his “lifelong work promoting religious liberty and freedom of conscience and expression around the world, ideals enshrined by America’s founders in the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.”
Then Pope Leo will deliver his acceptance remarks virtually from the Vatican through a livestream.
It promises to be must-see TV, especially if the US is bogged down in Iran.
Searching for a mission… America’s deadbeat European allies have said “no thanks” to Trump’s plea to for ships to patrol the Strait of Hormuz.
“This is not our war, we have not started it,” said Germany’s snooty defense minister Boris Pistorius on March 16. UK prime minister Keir Starmer is thinking about sending mine-sweeping drones.
How pathetic!
The US president needs to unveil Plan B. He should convene the second meeting of the Board of Peace and ask its members for the needed boats.
It’s not as if the BOP has its plate full. It’s $5B plan to reconstruct Gaza and inject a peace-keeping force into the Strip has gone nowhere.
Israel continues to pound Gaza. The Palestinian Ministry of Health reports that since October 11, the first full day of the so-called ceasefire, Israel has killed 673 Palestinians and wounded 1,799 of them.
Its time for BOP members to do their part to promote peace by preventing Iranian forces from firing drones at oil tankers in the Strait of Hormuz.
It’s up to you Mongolia, Uzbekistan, Argentina, El Salvador, Armenia, Kazakhstan, Kosovo, Morocco and the rest of you to step up.
Heed the call of BOP’s leader and help bail him out of the mess that he has created in Iran.
Reed Hastings, the genius behind Netflix's DVD-by-mail strategy, steps down. If O'Dwyer's had a Corporate Hall of Fame, Reed would be in it... Donald Trump's revenge tour rolls on as his team strips $11M from Catholic Charities that is used to run shelters for migrant children who have entered the US alone... Crusader Pete Hegseth should lay off the biblical stuff for a while, or at least until the world has moved on from his boss’ depiction of himself as Jesus.
AI is disrupting shareholder activism communications, forcing financial PR pros to reshape their narratives so they are accurately interpreted and amplified by algorithmic engines, according to a white paper by KekstCNC... Team Trump sneaks into NYC to praise gas pipeline project... What's moral about threatening to wipe out an entire civilization, JD?
Pope Leo says he has no fear of the Trump administration or speaking out loudly of the message of the gospel. That is, after all, his job.
Melania Trump's bolt-out-of-the-blue April 9 appearance to claim she had no relationship with Jeffrey Epstein is not going to boost her -12 percent popularity rating. It may make it worse... Mentioning "Avignon," home of the antipopes, to the Vatican's US ambassador is like shouting "Remember the Alamo" on the streets of Mexico City.
Donald Trump served up his tastiest TACO on April 7 when he postponed his threat to wipe out Iran’s civilization for the blocking of Strait of Hormuz.
