The AP reports: 17 US service members have died in the Iran war, reflecting a conflict fought largely in the air.
The U.S. military said Sunday that another American service member was killed as part of the war with Iran, bringing the total number of deaths to 17.
The deaths reflect the complicated reality that American boots don’t need to be on the ground for there to be lethal risks in a conflict that involves drones, missiles and airplanes. American forces are arrayed across the Middle East, making other nations targets of Iran as the fighting has escalated after a breakdown in peace talks.
President Donald Trump has said the war is necessary to stop Iran from developing nuclear weapons.
But, of course, that last sentence is a lie intended to justify a pointless conflict. I get that the AP is just reporting what he said, but would they do so if he had said that the war was necessary to stop pieces of brie from taking over Phobos? Maybe they would.
We are expending blood and treasure, while damaging the global economy for nothing. It is, unfortunately, the perfect illustration of the folly of electing a know-nothing egotist to the presidency.
Meanwhile, the NYT reports: Pentagon Withheld Dozens of U.S. Military Injuries in Iran War.
In the week leading up to the Iranian attack on Friday that killed two U.S. soldiers and left one service member missing in Jordan, Iran carried out three other strikes against U.S. forces in the country.
Those attacks injured dozens of U.S. service members and damaged several helicopters, according to several U.S. officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss operational matters.
But the Pentagon did not disclose the earlier strikes, nor the casualties and damage they inflicted.
The episode is the latest example during the Iran conflict of the tension between what the Pentagon says is the need for operational security and the government’s obligation to inform the public about the conduct of the war.
You know, we don’t want to make the CINC look bad for launching a needless war!
Additionally, let’s not forget that we still don’t have an accounting of the girls’ school that we bombed at the beginning of the war. Here’s CNN last week: Exclusive: US military hasn’t conducted standard review of intelligence tied to strike on school in Iran, sources say.
The investigation into a US strike that hit a school in Iran has sat for months with a military command while leaders have held off on ordering a critical, standard intelligence review to help determine what happened, according to three sources familiar with the matter.
I suppose it would be a sign of low-T to take responsibility for our actions, or something.
Note, also, via Al-Jazeera: What are ‘civilian’ sites in international law and where have US, Iran hit?
A spokesperson for United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said on Friday that he was “particularly concerned about attacks on civilian infrastructure in Iran and across the region”, adding that “such attacks are unacceptable”.
The 1949 Geneva Conventions and their Additional Protocols of 1977 forbid armed attacks or reprisals on civilian infrastructure or “objects” during a conflict.
Civilian infrastructure includes “all objects which are not military objectives”, the law says, and which are “normally dedicated to civilian purposes, such as a place of worship, a house, or other dwelling or a school”.
These also include any facilities that support the day-to-day lives of civilians and that are crucial to how a society functions: roads, bridges, railways, airports, electrical plants, sewage systems, hospitals, and phone and internet systems, for example.
The treaty states that drinking water installations and supplies, irrigation works, foodstuffs, crops, livestock as well as dams, dikes, and nuclear power generation plants also cannot be targeted.
When in doubt about whether an object is serving a military or civilian purpose, parties must assume it is civilian and thus cannot attack it, the law states.
The piece goes on to list what has been hit by US strikes.
And here are the overall death tolls as estimated by MilitarySpend, which includes between ~1,700 and ~3,700 Iranian civilians. You know, the people we were ostensibly trying to help by raining death and destruction down on their country.
