PARTIALMilitaryCENTCOM is providing lowball casualty figures, omitting 200+ sailors injured in the USS Gerald R. Ford fire, and ignoring a dozen requests for clarification. Biden admin provided detailed chronologies; Trump admin provides nothing.
“CENTCOM is providing lowball casualty figures, omitting 200+ sailors injured in the USS Gerald R. Ford fire, and ignoring a dozen requests for clarification. Biden admin provided detailed chronologies; Trump admin provides nothing.”
The Intercept asked CENTCOM a simple question: how many American service members have been killed or wounded in the Middle East? They asked twelve times. CENTCOM either gave lowball numbers or didn't respond at all.
Over 750 American casualties — killed and wounded — have occurred in Middle East operations. But the Pentagon's official figures don't include the 200+ sailors injured in the USS Gerald R. Ford fire, and they consistently undercount personnel wounded in smaller engagements across the theater.
Under the Biden administration, CENTCOM provided detailed chronologies of every engagement, casualty figures broken down by incident, and regular updates to media inquiries. Under the current administration, the same office provides nothing. Twelve requests from The Intercept went unanswered or received obviously incomplete responses.
America is at war. People are dying. And the government doesn't want you to know the scale because public support for military operations collapses when Americans see the real cost. Every war in American history has followed this pattern: the government hides casualties until they can't anymore.
Vietnam: body counts were fabricated. Iraq: casualties were hidden behind "contractors." Afghanistan: the Afghanistan Papers proved the Pentagon lied about the war for twenty years. And now the Middle East — same playbook, different desert.
No one's said anything yet. Be the first to drop your take.
