Chris Smith: Let’s hope National Security Adviser Robert O’Brien has it right about Iran’s plotting

The new year warmed quickly for Robert O’Brien, who 35 years ago studied at Santa Rosa’s Cardinal Newman High and today has a hand on the tiller as America navigates a perilous world.

Appointed just last fall as President Trump’s fourth national security adviser, O’Brien stands at ground zero in the international maelstrom over the Jan. 3 killing of Iranian Gen. Qassem Soleimani.

Perhaps you caught the NPR interview during which O’Brien told Steve Inskeep that “very good intelligence” persuaded U.S. officials that “Soleimani was in the act of planning attacks against Americans.”

O’Brien, as a teen an all-star debater at Cardinal Newman and a clerk at the old Miller’s Outpost at Coddingtown, was resolute that the killing of Soleimani was a response to clear evidence that Iran was moving to attack Americans “in Iraq and potentially Syria ... diplomats and soldiers, sailors, airmen, Marines.”

Not four months into his life-and-death position in the Trump administration, the ex-Santa Rosan is up to his neck, with his credibility on the line. It’s hard to hear the assurances that Soleimani was taken out to disrupt imminent attacks that could have killed many Americans without thinking back to the baseless reports of amassed weapons of mass destruction cited as justification for waging war on Iraq in 2003.

Let’s hope O’Brien has it right.

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THE POSTMAN GOETH: Folks in the Oakmont-Wild Oak area of easternmost Santa Rosa are a bit glum just now. John Lisciandro has retired.

For 33 years, Lisciandro was adored as the area’s supremely genial, precise and caring postman.

He said that as he walked his approximately 8-mile route he’d look across the valley to Hood Mountain and muse about whether there could be a finer place, or a better job, anywhere on Earth.

He tells of seeing a great many people come and go, and of watching Oakmont change. One observation: On garbage pickup day back when many more members of the World War II generation occupied the retirement oasis, “there were more liquor bottles sitting at the curb.”

With the arrival of younger people in Oakmont, he said, “there wasn’t as much as that.”

Lisciandro for years enjoyed daily swims at the YMCA, but found he had to give them up because he was so worn out by lugging all of the Amazon parcels that appeared in his bag.

He said he’s missing his patrons, he truly is. But, oh, how he’s liking being back in the pool.

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AUSTRALIA and its fire-ravaged wildlife are weighting the hearts of Brandi Blue and her crew at Penngrove’s Safari Encounters wildlife rescue and education center.

Driven to help, they and members of the nonprofit Become One Voice will bring exotic animals from Australia and elsewhere to a benefit brunch on Jan. 26 at Sally Tomatoes in Rohnert Park.

Among the animal ambassadors to attend: wallabies and a bettong, a small Australian marsupial sometimes called a rat kangaroo.

Find more about the Wine Country for Wildlife brunch at safariencounters.org.

Proceeds from the brunch will go to the Australia Zoo Wildlife Hospital.

You can reach Staff Writer Chris Smith at 707-521-5211 or chris.smith@pressdemocrat.com.