The Pentagon’s casualty website listed 18 American troops killed in the Iran war on Wednesday — by Thursday, that number had dropped to 14. We can’t imagine why.
According to three officials who spoke anonymously about internal discussions, the change came down to the administration pulling four names from the list: three troops killed in Jordan and one in northern Iraq over the weekend, all killed after Trump’s April ceasefire declaration, the New York Times reports. Publicly, though, acting Pentagon press secretary Joel Valdez attributed it up to a “temporary data disruption,” denoting it would be fixed soon.
Quietly pulling someone’s name off an official casualty list, especially while the administration is still fielding tough questions about how the war’s being managed, does read as putting optics ahead of honesty about who actually died and why.
The retired general in the piece put it plainly: it points to trouble being straight with the public about the war’s real cost.
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