Note: This story has already been noted in today’s Open Forum, but I think it warrants its own post.
The NYT report: Number of U.S. Troop Deaths Suddenly Appears Lower on Pentagon Website.
On Wednesday, the Pentagon reported on its casualties website that a total of 18 American service members had been killed during the war in Iran.
By Thursday, the Defense Department had lowered that number, reporting that 14 American troops had been killed in the war.
Three military officials said that one reason behind the change was that the Trump administration decided to remove four service members killed this past weekend from the list — three in Jordan and one in northern Iraq — because their deaths occurred after President Trump declared a cease-fire in the war in April.
This, despite all the talk about how important our “warriors” are to this administration, is a blatant playing of political semantics with the death of US troops who were put in harm’s way by this president.
It is using the troops as political props.
I suspect that this is part of the whole “are we at war”/”we are in a ceasefire” part of the Trump administration’s Calvinball approach to the War Powers Act, so as to avoid having to deal with Congress.
And speaking of using them as props, this was disrespectful and grotesque.
“All of them said, very strongly, that we can’t let Iran have a nuclear weapon, so we’re going to honor them,” Mr. Trump told journalists as he was departing for the dignified transfer.
Putting your political words in the mouths of the dead is yet another sign of his moral degeneracy.
Meanwhile, the Pentagon wants us to believe that it is a technical problem.
The acting press secretary for the Pentagon, Joel Valdez, attributed the change instead to “temporary data disruptions” on the website that he suggested would be quickly fixed.
[…]
Mr. Valdez referred to the changes as “site anomalies” and said they were being resolved.
“The department attempted to explain the anomalies to The New York Times ahead of publication, but given their lack of knowledge in this area, they proceeded to write a non-story,” he said in an email, adding: “We remain committed to ensuring the utmost accuracy of all casualty reporting.”
Site anomalies.
Sure.
Getting a number posted on a website is quite complicated.
Overall, it is quite clear that they see the troops as simply pawns in the overall machinations.
The issue of troop deaths is significant because both President Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth have essentially made it so. Both men have repeatedly said that their predecessors, President Joseph R. Biden Jr. and Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III, as well as Vice President Kamala Harris, were personally responsible for the deaths of 13 American service members in a suicide attack in Kabul in 2021.
[…]
The Pentagon has indicated it is preparing to release a review of the Afghanistan withdrawal that Mr. Hegseth ordered. That review, led by Mr. Parnell, will “ensure ACCOUNTABILITY to the American people and the warfighters of our great Nation,” Mr. Hegseth wrote last year in announcing the effort.
Their attitude toward injuries is likewise maddening. The public deserves to know.
After an Iranian strike in Jordan on Friday killed three soldiers, the Pentagon’s chief spokesman, Sean Parnell, acknowledged that the number of U.S. military casualties since July 7 had risen to nearly 100.
Defense Department officials say they are bound by law to report troop deaths, but not injuries. Critics, including Democratic senators, say the Trump administration is obligated to inform the public about the conduct of the war.
The idea that the law doesn’t require causality information is quite the cop out.
And this is just parsing death for political reasons.
In its casualty toll for the Iran war, the Pentagon has separated the number of troops killed under fire from those killed in accidents. As of Wednesday, its data showed that 11 service members were killed in hostilities and seven in accidents related to the war.
The seven killed in accidents include the crew of a U.S. military KC-135 refueling aircraft that crashed in Iraq in March, as part of the war campaign in neighboring Iran.
Meanwhile, I checked Trump’s Truth Social account, and the first several posts are about him hosting the LA Dodgers and Shohei Otani at the White House. Because, you know, it’s good to be the king.
And, weirdly, the White House Flickr feed has a bunch of new photos from the June UFC events in its photostream. This has driven all the photos of Dover Air Force Base showing the dignified transfer of troops killed in the Iran war well down the front page. Given the way that Flickr works, that means for some reason, new photos from over a month ago were recently uploaded despite there already having been a tranche of those photos uploaded at the time.
But, of course, no one would upload happy photos to cover up the unhappy ones. No presidential administration is that crass and insecure.
Right?
Here are the four.
