Trump's Pentagon Is Undercounting Troop Casualties in Middle East
An investigation found that the Department of Defense has sent out outdated statements about the number of troops wounded or killed in Iran.
https://newrepublic.com/post/208551/pentagon-iran-troop-casualties-donald-trump
The Pentagon appears to be engaged in a casualty cover-up of U.S. soldiers killed as a result of Donald Trumps military onslaught in Iran, a U.S. defense official told The Intercept.
An analysis by The Intercept found that the Department of Defense has used outdated numbers in statements on casualties, resulting in undercounts of how many troops have been wounded or killed.
In a statement sent Monday, CENTCOM said that approximately 303 U.S. service members have been wounded since the launch of Operation Epic Fury. But that number was three days old, and excluded the at least 15 troops wounded in a strike at Prince Sultan Air Base in Saudi Arabia last week.
CENTCOM would not provide any information about the number of U.S. troops who have been killed since the start of the war, but The Intercept placed the number at around 15. Six soldiers were killed in a strike on a makeshift operations center in Kuwait, and another six died serving aboard a KC-135 refueling aircraft that crashed in Iraq. Another soldier was killed on March 1, during an enemy attack on the base in Saudi Arabia.
This is, quite obviously, a subject that [Defense Secretary Pete] Hegseth and the White House want to keep under major wraps, said the defense official, who spoke to The Intercept on the condition of anonymity.