A Pentagon website has removed the names of four U.S. service members killed in Donald Trump’s war with Iran from its list of casualties.
The Defense Casualty Analysis System, a Defense Department website that keeps track of those killed during Operation Epic Fury, currently has a tally of seven “hostile” and seven “non-hostile” casualties, for a total of 14. But that’s four less than the number of deaths the site had listed on Wednesday, The New York Times reported.
It’s also less than the number that Trump himself has acknowledged. One death, he said on Thursday, “is too many, but it’s 18.”
According to the Times, there are conflicting reasons for the website removing the names of the four service members who died over the last week.
Acting Pentagon Press Secretary Joel Valdez told the paper that there had been “temporary data disruptions.”
“The department attempted to explain the anomalies to The New York Times ahead of publication, but given their lack of knowledge in this area, they proceeded to write a non-story,” Valdez told the Times in a statement. “We remain committed to ensuring the utmost accuracy of all casualty reporting.”
Yet three military officials told the Times that one reason for the change was because the troops’ deaths took place after Trump declared a cease fire in April.
That cease fire proved not to hold, and the war continues on, well after the president said he would bring it to a close.
The Daily Beast has reached out to the Pentagon for comment.
One retired general told the Times that this episode is one example of the Trump administration’s trouble being forthright with the public about the war.
“The administration seems to have a real hard time being honest about what is going on — not just about casualties, but about the whole war in general,” retired Lt. Gen. Ben Hodges, an Iraq and Afghanistan War veteran, said.
Downplaying war deaths, Hodges added, shows “an unwillingness or inability to aggressively learn from mistakes.”
At a dignified transfer ceremony at Dover Air Force Base on Wednesday, Trump, 80, and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, 46, watched the delivery of the flag-draped caskets of the four service members killed overseas in the last week: Army 1st Lt Tyler James Feehan, 25, of Hawaii, Sgt. Angel S. Rampersad, 28, of New York, Pvt. Isabella Gonzales, 19, of Texas, and Sgt. Michael Emmanuel Swinton, 30, of North Carolina.
Feehan, Gonzales, and Rampersad died in Jordan during Iranian ballistic missile and drone attacks. Swinton died on Sunday in Iraq during a controlled explosion of an Iranian drone.
Hegseth on Tuesday had to face tough questions from lawmakers about the war, now in its fifth month. After estimating the cost of the conflict to be a staggering $37.5 billion and asking Congress for more money, the defense secretary was confronted with his own words about the war from March.
Georgia Sen. Jon Ossoff pressed Hegseth about claiming to have “destroyed” Iran’s military and about the “overwhelming victory” of Operation Epic Fury—comments that ring hollow as the death toll rises several months later.
