Former CIA Director and Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta says the Trump administration’s approach to releasing casualty information about the Iran war has been “shameful.”
Aside from announcing that 18 American soldiers have been killed, there has been little released by the Pentagon about those injured by Iran or the extent of damage inflicted on American bases and equipment.
Panetta, who oversaw the assassination of Osama Bin Laden during the presidency of Barack Obama, says Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth is handling the release of information about Iran all wrong.
“There’s a deliberate effort here to basically withhold information from the American people, and I think it represents in many ways a shameful approach to sharing the responsibility that we all have when it comes to fighting a war,” he told The Guardian.
Roughly 430 US troops have been injured since President Donald Trump first attacked Iran on Feb. 28. The Pentagon said this week that 100 service members have been injured since July 7, but that 96 percent of those troops have already returned to duty.
Lawmakers have demanded more transparency from the Pentagon and the White House on the war—both on the cost of the campaign but also on the damage suffered at U.S. bases overseas.
Hegseth has appeared reluctant to discuss the cost—financial or otherwise—of the war, even when ordered to do so by Congress.
The Department of Defense and the White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Hegseth has even fired senior Pentagon staff who undercut his grandiose claims about the war and is locked in a feud with the mainstream press, who have, in some instances, been stripped of credentials and replaced by ‘friendly’ outlets.
“I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to say this Pentagon has been more hostile to the news media than any other Pentagon in recent memory,” Clayton Weimers, the Washington director for Reporters Without Borders, told The Guardian.
