Pentagon denies trying to play down injuries from Iran attack
>>WASHINGTON: The Pentagon said on Friday there had been no effort to play down or delay the release of information on concussive injuries from Iran’s attack on a base hosting US forces in Iraq on Jan 8, saying the public learned just hours after the defence secretary.
US President Donald Trump, Defence Secretary Mark Esper and others throughout the US government for a week had said that Iran’s attack on bases in Iraq, in retaliation for the killing of an Iranian general, had not killed or injured any US servicemembers.
That is no longer true, the Pentagon now acknowledges. But US military leadership in Washington only became aware on Thursday that 11 US service members were flown out of Iraq due to concussive symptoms, Pentagon spokesman Jonathan Hoffman said.
“This idea that there was an effort to de-emphasise injuries for some sort of amorphous political agenda doesn’t hold water,” Mr Hoffman said.
However, the disclosure of the concussive symptoms which were made late on Thursday, more than a week after the attack itself, is likely at a minimum to open a debate about the Pentagon’s longstanding treatment of brain injury as a different class of wounds that it says do not require immediate reporting up the chain of command.
US military has to immediately report incidents threatening life, limb or eyesight. But suspected brain injury, which can take time to manifest and diagnose, does not have that urgent requirement.
Mr Esper was only informed on Thursday that the service members were flown out of Iraq to receive additional screening and treatment in bases in Kuwait and Germany, the Pentagon said.
The first US service member was flown out of Iraq on Jan 10 for further evaluation, while others were flown out on Jan. 15.
“They were under their own power, on aircraft and on their way,” Mr Hoffman said.
He also noted that top Pentagon officials have not sought to minimise Iran’s attack and instead repeatedly said Iran had attempted to kill US troops when it fired 16 short-range ballistic missiles at two Iraqi bases from at least three locations.
In his first Friday prayers sermon in eight years, Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, told worshippers chanting “Death to America” that the elite Guards could take their fight beyond Iran’s borders after the US killing of a top Iranian commander.