On the Road to Armageddon

Pete Hegseth says “It takes money to kill bad guys!"

BY PHILIP GIRALDI

I had thought the United States government had hit a new low point last week when the Federal Commission of Fine Arts approved a Semiquincentennial 250th anniversary commemorative 24 karat gold coin featuring President Donald J Trump leaning on his his desk with clenched fists and scowling but that was before Secretary of War Pete Hegseth demanded $200 billion from America’s taxpayers to continue to fight the war against Iran, saying “It takes money to kill bad guys!”

Admittedly the approval for the coin was a slam-dunk as Trump had appointed all the members of the Commission, just as he did when he loaded the board after deciding to destroy and rename the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. The only concern during the discussion with US Mint officials was over the size of the coin, with the president urging the commissioners to go big with coins of maximum size measuring three inches in diameter. It is now expected that Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, another Trump loyalist, will ‌order the coin to be minted.

I would point out that a president having a coin issued with his own portrait on it is not exactly an established American governmental tradition. In fact, most Americans just might find it absolutely in poor taste and even disgraceful, the act of a megalomaniac who just might be considered insane based on his own utterances and other behavior. Last week, Trump was meeting in the White House with the woman Prime Minister of Japan Sanae Takaichi when he made a joke responding to a journalist’s question about his decision to “surprise” Iran by attacking it, saying “Who knows better about surprise than Japan? OK? Why didn’t you tell me about Pearl Harbor? OK? Right?” Takaichi was clearly shocked.

Earlier in the week Trump was also in top form in terms of inappropriate commentary, stating that he was open to using “ground troops” against Iran, which would kill a lot of American military personnel for absolutely nothing in terms of benefitting US interests or needs. He has also threatened to tear apart NATO if the member states do not rally around the US effort to defeat Iran and open the Straits of Hormuz. He has inevitably called those unwilling to fight “cowards.”

NATO, which has admittedly outlived its usefulness, rightly recognizes that Iran is Trump and Israel’s war, not Europe’s. Spain has bluntly told Trump to take a hike and has blocked use of its NATO bases to US military aircraft supporting the war. Sweden, meanwhile, has boldly declared Israel MUST be ISOLATED and EXPELLED from international institutions like the UN & EU over escalating Gaza crisis and West Bank annexations! Swedish leaders slam settlement violence, NGO bans, and aid blocks as “catastrophic,” urging sanctions on “extremist” Israeli ministers and trade freezes. Several other nations have also declared that they will arrest Netanyahu, if he is still alive, under the International Criminal Court arrest warrant that has been issued should he ever appear in their countries. They have also denied their airspace to any Israeli plane bearing Netanyahu, which has made it difficult for the prime minister to travel outside Israel. French three-star General Michel Yakovleff, who once commanded the Foreign Legion, just compared joining Trump and Israel’s Iran war to “buying cheap tickets for the Titanic” after it already hit the iceberg.

And hold on because there is still more! Trump is threatening to pull the licenses of US broadcasters who are reporting stories relating to the Iran attack that do not agree with the approved narrative on the war that is coming out of the White House and from the War and State Departments. The White House is calling such reporting “fake news.” If approved, the move would make free speech by the news media conditional on who is president and what his or her politics are, a quite possibly fatal blow against the First Amendment. And there are also reports that the Justice Department is going after conservative war critics including Tucker Carlson, who will reportedly be investigated for “acting as an agent of a foreign power.” One AIPAC linked Congressman is demanding that he be investigated on charges of treason, which is the one crime in the Constitution of the United States that carries with it the death penalty.

Likewise Joe Kent, a completely respectable and highly decorated Director of the government’s US National Counterterrorism Center who has an impeccable resume, is in the news for his Tuesday resignation from his position. He provided two reasons for doing so. First, he declared that the war against Iran claim that Iran posed an “imminent threat” against the United States was a lie and secondly, that the war was being fought for Israel, not in support of any American national or security interest. Kent was right in every detail, observing how “high ranking Israeli officials and influential members of the American media” worked hard on what was a disinformation campaign to bring about a war against Iran, to the benefit of Tel Aviv and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. And both they and Trump and his staff have been persistent liars about the conflict, even going so far as describing it as an “excursion” rather than a “war” to sell it to the public. Trump even lied about the US bombing on the first day of the war that killed 170 Iranian schoolgirls, falsely claiming that Iran had carried out the attack.

The attempt to discredit Kent is going full speed ahead. Per Trump , “I always thought he was weak on security, very weak on security. not very good,” a laughable assertion coming from someone like the president given his record. And the FBI is reportedly investigating Kent for “leaks of classified information” that what was allegedly leaked has not been revealed. Trump has also demonstrated what a class act he is by using the deaths of American soldiers as a hook for obtaining contributions and other support for his own political action committees. The message, sent Thursday and paid for by Trump registered Never Surrender Inc. pac, advertised a new “National Security Briefing Membership” and included multiple donation links. The solicitation included a picture of Trump in his goofy baseball cap saluting the coffins as they rolled by at Dover Air Force Base. The lack of dignity of the hat offended many serving military as well as veterans, like myself!

And finally, for a bit of what just might turn out to be good news! The reports of the misfortunes of the world’s largest warship, the aircraft carrier USS Gerald R Ford, have been circulating for the past couple of weeks, starting with malfunction of the ship’s toilets, requiring repairs and maintenance. According to one report, it may have been due to deliberate clogging of the ship’s plumbing by crew members flushing and otherwise jamming clothing and other “indigestible” items into the pipes. There has also been a large 30-hour fire reported in the ship laundry room which has required returning to Crete for major repairs. The Ford has now left the operational area linked to Iran.

And there is more regarding internal dissent appearing on places like Facebook, though the information cannot be verified, relating to sailors refusing orders and even officers questioning ships moving into position with combat roles against Iran without the appropriate Constitution and War Powers authorizations for such action. By one account, both soldiers and sailors have become accustomed to saluting their officers not with a response “Yes, Sir!” but rather with “Epstein!” It is being claimed in some circles that a significant part of the navy is being “difficult,” producing inter alia a screaming fit from draft dodger-in-chief Donald J Trump about military personnel refusing to obey orders. If the reports are true, they should be encouraged by all of us who have had enough of Israel, Trump and the war which just might turn nuclear sooner than anyone would like to think, particularly if Israel starts losing heavily and gets desperate.

Another thing that Mr Trump, the self-designated genius, just might want to be thinking about is the possibility that, if the US decides to cut its losses and pull out of the war against Iran, Israel will be greatly pissed off. Netanyahu just might pull a false flag, like 9/11 may have actually been, to kill a large number of Americans stationed in the Middle East, blaming it on Iran to motivate Trump to stick with it. That possibility is only based on a suspicion that I have been nursing as Trump gets increasingly nervous about the war and, after all, Israel has historically speaking had no problem killing Americans as needed. Or anyone else.

https://www.unz.com/pgiraldi/on-the-road-to-armageddon/

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TRUMP KNOWS EXACTLY WHAT HE'S DOING, DESPITE ALL HIS BUMBLING, HIS SNAKERY AND DITHERING... HE IS DESTROYING OUR COMFORTABLE STATUS QUO AND RESHAPING A "NEW WORLD" USING ALL THE PSYCHOPATHIC AMMOS, INCLUDING BELIEFS, TO DESTROY BELIEFS AND REPLACE THEM WITH FULL ON CONQUEST — PUSH, SHOVE, RETREAT, REPEAT... THE AMERICAN EMPIRE IS IN FULL SWING. TRUMP DOES NOT CARE ABOUT HIMSELF, DESPITE BEING A NARCISIST...