'If You Can Keep It': The Pentagon And Transparency

At least 18 American service members have been killed and hundreds more wounded since the start of the Iran war.On Tuesday, President Donald Trump spoke little of the troops who’d recently been killed before giving updates on the war:We feel very badly, but you know those great people, those great patriots who are out there fighting that Iran cannot have a nuclear weapon. Iran has been very, very badly damaged. They’ve lost everything almost militarily. They’ve got very little left. They’ve got some missiles. They’ve got some drones. They’ve got some manufacturing ability, not much. We control the strait. They don’t control anything, so we’ll see what happens.We get into funding – whether Congress will exercise its powers over the flow of money and the president’s war powers.The Pentagon is shutting out the free press and even downplaying troop deaths. Those four service members killed in Jordan and Iraq last weekend? The Pentagon scrubbed them from the war casualty record less than a week later. The Trump administration said their deaths don’t count toward the official Iran war death toll because they were killed after the president declared a ceasefire in April.Over the weekend, after facing backlash from veterans and military families, the Pentagon restored those four soldiers killed in Iranian strikes last weekend to their casualty database and added more than 140 new wounded soldiers.Today on 1A, what responsibility does the Pentagon have to communicate transparently with the media and the American public?Find more of our programs online. Listen to 1A sponsor-free by signing up for 1A+ at plus.npr.org/the1a.See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.NPR Privacy Policy