Top Democrat on Armed Services says Trump and Pentagon hiding American casualty figures from Congress: “We have a dictator running this country”
BREAKING: Top Democrat on Armed Services says Trump and Pentagon hiding American casualty figures from Congress: “We have a dictator running this country
The top Democrat overseeing our military just said something that should stop every American cold: Congress does not know how many U.S. soldiers have been wounded in Trump’s Iran war. Because the Pentagon won’t tell them.
Rep. Adam Smith is the ranking Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee. If ANYONE outside the Pentagon should know the full picture of American casualties and losses, it’s him. Instead, here’s how he says he finds out about attacks on our troops: “I get reports from people who know a service member at a base in Jordan or Iraq, saying, ‘Yeah, we heard there was an attack. There’s 20 or 30 people wounded.’ Pentagon doesn’t say anything about it.”
Read that again. The man charged with congressional oversight of our military is learning about wounded Americans through word of mouth. Even CNN’s Erin Burnett was stunned, pointing out how insane it is that HIS source is “somebody calling who has a friend who serves on a base.”
And the reporting backs him up. The New York Times found that Iran carried out three strikes on U.S. forces over the past week and a half that the Defense Department never acknowledged. Dozens of soldiers wounded. Helicopters hit. Silence.
What we do know is grim enough. At least 17 American soldiers killed since this war began. Two Army soldiers killed in Iran’s strikes on Jordan this weekend. Another killed in Iraq disposing of an Iranian drone. Ten straight days of U.S. bombing. A war a clear majority of Americans have opposed from the start.
Smith didn’t dance around what this is: “We have a dictator running this country. We have never had a situation where we’ve been at war and the president has treated it as his own war, where he doesn’t have to share information with the American people or with Congress.”
These aren’t statistics. They’re sons and daughters, husbands and wives — and their families deserve better than a government that hides what’s happening to them. Every wounded soldier concealed from Congress is a family left in the dark and a country denied the truth about a war being waged in its name.
This is not how a democracy fights a war. This is how a regime hides one.
