Editor:

So President Trump orders the bombing of Iran. He says to stop their ability to build a nuclear bomb which he already said the strikes on Iran months ago completely destroyed their capability to do so.

Then he indicates regime change is a goal. His Secretary of State says that Israel was going to bomb Iran so the US had to join them to protect US personnel and interests in the area and regime change was not an objective.

Hostilities commence and the crap hits the fan. US military installations in the area are not significantly hardened and Iranian munitions kill US service members and destroy assets. The commander in chief says there will be casualties as this happens in war, brilliant military mind he is. Then we lose three multimillion dollar aircraft to friendly fire. Actually our own planes were shot down with air defenses supplied by the US.

Iran targets our embassies and consulates in the area and civilian airports, stranding thousands of American citizens and the state department says we can’t help you and you are on your own and get out anyway you can.

So here we are. My take is when you fire every senior experienced and seasoned military leader, others resign rather than support the regime and replace them with Trump loyalists, the force is weakened. Especially when you have a totally incompetent Secretary of Defense.

During the DOGE purge many senior State Department staff were fired or resigned causing a large gap in the ability to anticipate, plan and protect citizens abroad. This is the most reckless and irresponsible administration in the history of the country. This nightmare will only stop when Americans wake up. So again I ask still not enough?

Thanks.

James Fraser, Colonel (Retired), USAF

Batavia

Editor:

The Somerset Solar project is a 125 megawatt installation proposed on part of the site of the shuttered coal-fired powerplant.

Financially, the project should stand on its own and not receive tax breaks or financial incentives from the Niagara County Industrial Development Agency (NCIDA) or other organizations.

Those that argue for incentives claim Somerset Solar will help meet the New York State Energy Policy Goals. These goals are under question as to how realistic they are and raise issues that were ignored in the original State Office of Renewable Energy Siting (ORES) decision.

Claims made that the Somerset Town Board is on record as approving the project are false. More power to our Governor who has begun to raise questions about certain of the issues surrounding “clean energy.” Further a greenspace barrier was required by the Article 8 siting process for the coal operations. That barrier is being destroyed to the detriment of those living in the area.

ORES has recently issued a deficiency judgement for the project allowing the clearing of trees to begin on the proposed site. There is nothing more counterproductive to clean air than cutting down trees and clearing forested lands. Trees absorb carbon dioxide (CO2) from the atmosphere, store it and release oxygen to the atmosphere. Exactly the process wanted to clean our air.

Further, trees act to deaden sounds and form a sight barrier, a much desired effect to preserve the Rural Character of our area. The Nature Conservancy in its Spring 2026 issue indicated that New York State has a plan to plant 680 million  trees by 2040. Part of this plan should be to stop the arbitrary destruction  of forested areas for unreliable clean energy projects.

The Somerset Solar Project will remove 247 acres from active farming. The 2022 Agricultural Census of Niagara County estimated the average yearly value of agricultural products sold in the County is $1,291 per acre. Over the projected life of 35 years the total loss in agricultural production in Somerset will exceed eleven million dollars in 2022 year dollars. How will this sum ever be recovered?

Farmland and all green spaces should never be used for solar projects. Secure landfills, rooftops, abandoned shopping centers and parking lots, and brownfields located in cities and suburban areas closer to the electrical demand are far better sites.

An examination of details of construction of Somerset Solar puts the lie to any possibility of rehabilitation of the site after it outlives its useful life. Hundreds of buried pilings will be constructed to support the thousands of solar panels. Five miles of crushed stone trails and roads will be constructed, eliminating any notion of ever farming the site again.

The claim is that Somerset Solar will supply power to 25,000 homes. This is at best half-truth as power is only generated when the sun shines. Reliable clean burning natural gas, reliable clean hydropower and reliable carbon free nuclear power come to the rescue.

The Niagara County Industrial Development Agency must deny the request of Somerset Solar for all manner of tax exemptions and financial incentives. Hopefully this action will be enough to kill the project. We will all benefit!

James C. Hoffman

Town of Somerset

Editor:

By the time I was done reading about the bombing of a girls’ school in Minab, Iran, on Saturday morning, Trump/Netanyahu supporters were already hard at work running cover.

“You believe Iranian state media?” “You’re telling me they were in school on Saturday?” “Oh, did you forget war is hell?” American media would wait to report on the school children we killed until Sunday, when the death toll had reached well over one hundred. Now we have videos, evidence, photos of bloody backpacks, and all those Trump/Netanyahu supporters have to say is…

Well that’s the obvious problem; they can’t get their story straight. Why were suddenly bombing dozens of sites across Iran? Trump said it was so they couldn’t make nukes. This, despite the fact Ted Cruz told the media he’d seen no evidence Iran was rebuilding what we apparently “obliterated” last June (the “12 Day War”), and despite the fact that negotiators told CBS news the day before that the US and Iran had come to a framework for a nuclear deal more comprehensive and secure even the historic and durable one Obama signed in 2015, and despite the fact that last spring Trump’s own Director of National Intelligence said, “Iran not building a nuclear weapon and Supreme Leader Khamanei has not authorized the nuclear weapons program he suspended in 2003.”

To hear others tell it, the reason Trump was now killing civilians in Iran and admitting American soldiers would have to die (Trump: “That’s just the way it is”) was that Iran was a brutal regime that kills its own citizens. If that’s a legitimate reason for war, I think we have to start a lot more wars. If Trump cared about the deaths of protestors, he wouldn’t have blamed Alex Pretti for legally carrying a firearm while trying to help a woman abused by an ICE officer.

Others say we had to bomb Iran because the Ayatollah was a religious zealot who says “Death to America.” Has anyone heard the way our own government officials speaks about other countries and entire ethnicities?

Does anyone remember that Iran was a democracy in 1951 when Mossadegh was voted in on a platform of nationalizing Iran’s oil? The CIA created a coup and installed a literal King whose police state brutalized Iranians for decades before a religious movement overthrew him. Trump and his cronies are the last people I want to hear talk about Democracy; anyone paying attention can see this is part of his broad, chaotic attempt to stop future elections (just listen to the pro-Trump attorneys pushing him to sign an executive order to declare an election-stopping emergency over “Chinese election interference in 2020”).

There are no good reasons for this war. Iran is not a threat to us.

There are not good reasons to bomb a school. Children are not a threat to us.

There are no good reasons to close the entry points to Gaza and stop the World Central Kitchen from feeding the starving Palestinian people. Palestinians are not a threat to us.

Trump is a threat to us. We’ve already seen US soldiers die. Praying won’t save them. The only thing that can is an act of Congress. Use the 25th amendment because he’s clearly lost touch with reality, or impeach him, again.

Tyler Barton

Hamlin