Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s Pentagon has left at least four American military deaths off its public casualty list since the Iran war began, six U.S. officials said.
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Six officials familiar with the Defense Department’s internal casualty records described the gap to The Washington Post, which published their account Friday.
Five of them said at least 22 service members have died. The Pentagon’s public database, the Defense Casualty Analysis System, listed 18 as of Friday. A sixth official said 23 service members have died since Feb. 28, when the Trump administration and Israel launched the war.
Three American contractors based in the region have also died since combat operations began, that official told the newspaper.
Not all of the undisclosed military deaths were tied directly to the fighting, the same official said, though each involved personnel serving in the Middle East during the hostilities.
The identities of those who died, and when and how, remain unclear. The Pentagon declined to address questions about the discrepancy, according to the Post. Officials familiar with the higher count said they were frustrated that the additional deaths do not appear in the public portal.
When a service member dies, the military opens a line of duty investigation to determine whether the death occurred while the person was performing official duties, the Post reported.
That finding shapes which survivor benefits the family can receive.
The administration’s casualty accounting drew scrutiny earlier this year, when the names of four troops killed as a result of the war briefly disappeared from the official tally, the newspaper reported.
Around that time, the administration reclassified the renewed hostilities as Overseas Operations rather than tying them to Operation Epic Fury, its name for the Iran war, the Post found.
More than 820 service members have been wounded in action since the war began, the public database says. Many suffered traumatic brain injuries in Iranian strikes on American bases across the region.
“Pete Hegseth’s obsession with dead and wounded has led him to manipulate the KIA [killed in action] and wounded numbers and to fail to report deaths in the Iran War,” wrote Scott Horton, a contributing editor at Harper’s Magazine.
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“This is positively perverse,” Horton added.
“Pete Hegseth is covering up the deaths of American service members and contractors in the Middle East,” wrote Krystal Ball, co-host of the political show Breaking Points.
Rep. Jason Crow (D-CO) and 11 other House Democrats, all of them military veterans, said Friday they were introducing legislation to bar the Pentagon from manipulating government data on troop casualties, the Post reported.
“Hiding the troops who died in your stupid and unpopular war of choice,” wrote Kevin M. Kruse, a Princeton University historian.
“Disgraceful,” wrote Bill Kristol, editor-at-large of The Bulwark.
“These people are abominable. Hegseth must go,” wrote Michelangelo Signorile, host of a daily program on SiriusXM Progress.
Hegseth already faces an impeachment effort from within his own party. Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) introduced eight articles of impeachment against him on Tuesday, charging in that Hegseth waged war on Iran without authorization from Congress.
Massie made the resolution privileged, forcing the House to vote on it within two legislative days. Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) then sent members home a day early on Wednesday for a seven-week recess that runs past the November elections, the Associated Press reported.
“He cut off the day tomorrow to avoid the vote,” Massie said, calling the early recess a “Hegseth holiday.”
Johnson called the impeachment push a stunt. He said the House would table the resolution when it returns in November.
“Secretary Hegseth has done an extraordinary job at the Department of War,” the speaker said, using the administration’s new name for the Pentagon.
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