The New York Times reports:

In the week leading up to the Iranian attack on Friday that killed two U.S. soldiers and left one service member missing in Jordan, Iran carried out three other strikes against U.S. forces in the country.

Those attacks injured dozens of U.S. service members and damaged several helicopters, according to several U.S. officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss operational matters.

But the Pentagon did not disclose the earlier strikes, nor the casualties and damage they inflicted.

The episode is the latest example during the Iran conflict of the tension between what the Pentagon says is the need for operational security and the government’s obligation to inform the public about the conduct of the war. [Continue reading…]

Last month, CBS News reported:

When Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth was asked about the toll of the conflict with Iran in March, he told reporters that “almost 90%” of the 400 injured American service members had sustained only minor injuries and had since returned to duty.

Now, some of those wounded soldiers tell CBS News the injuries were far more serious than the official designation provided by the military.

Chief Warrant Officer Rodney Bearman’s body was riddled with shrapnel in the early hours of the war on March 1 when an Iranian drone slammed into his work station in Kuwait. Medical records reviewed by CBS News show he also suffered a concussion, hearing and vision loss, and damage to his lungs. The Army has classified his condition as “not seriously injured.”

“That assessment is unacceptable,” his wife, Amy Bearman, told CBS News in an interview.

Chief Bearman, 57, was one of more than 20 hurt in the deadliest strike of the conflict on American soldiers and the worst attack on American troops since 2021. The Bearmans are also among several survivors and their families who told CBS News they weren’t being treated by the military as combat casualties for reasons they could not understand — a claim an Army spokesman strongly denied. [Continue reading…]

In April, Nick Turse reported:

Whatever the actual number, the Pentagon’s official tally of dead and wounded military personnel is a gross undercount, stemming from what one U.S. government official has called a “casualty cover-up.” The Defense Casualty Analysis System, or DCAS, which tracks “deceased, wounded, ill or injured” service members for Congress and the president, is missing hundreds of known casualties.

“These numbers, it is obvious, are important. That they don’t want the public to have them says something,” the official said. “That’s the definition of a cover-up.”

The Intercept spoke with two people who used to work on DCAS who said that there was historically very little lag between a casualty occurring in the field and its inclusion in the system. “We got it very quickly. We could report the number of casualties very fast,” Joan Crenshaw, who worked on DCAS during the war on terror, told The Intercept, noting that data was refreshed daily. [Continue reading…]