“Cover-Up”: Pentagon Is Downplaying Troop Casualties Under Trump

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. CENTCOM did not deign to reply to close to a dozen requests for clarification on the casualty count. CENTCOM also refused to provide information on which U.S. bases had been struck by retaliatory attacks from Iran. “We have nothing for you,” a spokesperson told The Intercept.Two weeks ago, U.S. CENTCOM spokesperson Captain Tim Hawkins confirmed that 200 U.S. servicemembers had been injured since the beginning of the joint U.S.-Israeli attacks. But that number did not appear to include the more than 200 sailors aboard the USS Gerald R. Ford who were treated for smoke inhalation after a fire on March 12. One sailor had to be medically evacuated from the ship, and two others were treated for lacerations. Iran’s retaliatory strikes have reportedly rendered many of the United States’s 13 military bases in the Gulf region all but uninhabitable, forcing American military servicemembers to work remotely from hotels and office spaces. Iran’s attacks on U.S. military bases caused an estimated 800 million in damage, according to a report by the Center for Strategic International Studies and a BBC analysis.