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pete hegseth
Senator Says Hegseth Barred Him From Gulf Base to 'Cover Up the True Cost' of Iran War
"And from what I understand, this is happening both to Democrats and Republicans when they are traveling to the Middle East."
Oct 06, 2026
A US senator visiting the Persian Gulf said Tuesday that the Pentagon blocked him from inspecting a heavily damaged American military installation and refused to arrange a briefing on the Iran War, accusing Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth of mounting an "unprecedented" effort to conceal the conflict's costs and consequences from lawmakers and the public.
“This trip confirmed for me that there is an active, unprecedented, unconstitutional effort underway to hide the costs of this war and the implications of this war from Congress and the American people,” Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) told reporters Tuesday in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.
Murphy said he sought to inspect Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar, the largest US military installation in the Middle East and a crucial hub for American operations in the region. The base was struck by Iranian missiles during the opening days of the war and sustained heavy damage, including a direct hit to its Combined Air Operations Center.
“I've never encountered anything like this in my time in the Senate,” the senator said, describing the Pentagon's actions as “part of a deliberate campaign of obfuscation that my Republican colleagues in Congress should demand an end to."
"We appropriate the money for that military action, and it is an ordinary function of members of Congress to travel around the world and talk to our generals and to our troops about military activities, especially during a time of war," Murphy continued.
"Adding insult to injury, the Department of Defense, under orders from [Defense Secretary] Pete Hegseth, even denied me access to talk to military leadership," he alleged. "They would not provide me even a briefing at the [US] Embassy."
According to Murphy:
Never before has this happened. Never before has a member of Congress been denied access to military facilities and been refused briefings by generals in theater. And from what I understand, this is happening both to Democrats and Republicans when they are traveling to the Middle East.
So just understand what this is: This is Secretary Hegseth deliberately trying to cover up the extent of damage, likely in the billions of dollars, trying to cover up the true cost of this war, trying to hide from you, from the American public, not just from members of Congress, the actual consequences of a war that is spiraling out of control by the day.
"This should be unacceptable to every member of Congress—Republicans and Democrats—and this should be unacceptable to the American public," he added.
The Pentagon defended the decision, saying the senator's office had been informed before his trip that the department would not support his access to Al Udeid. A senior Pentagon official cited a March 3 directive issued by Hegseth restricting travel to the region.
The dispute comes as the Trump administration faces mounting scrutiny over the increasingly protracted war's human and financial costs.
The illegal US-Israeli war of choice has cost the lives of thousands of Iranians, dozens of citizens and residents of Gulf states, and more than 20 US troops.
The 220-day war has already cost US taxpayers more than $40 billion, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office. It has driven up gasoline and energy prices, transportation and food costs, and is having broader inflationary effects caused largely by the disruption to global oil supplies and shipping.
Last week, President Donald Trump ordered the deployment of thousands more troops and another aircraft carrier to the Middle East.
"You know, by the way, we’re kicking Iran’s ass. You do know that, right? And that’ll end soon," the president told a Nebraska rally during a Monday speech in which he suggested he wouldn't mind Iran bombing California cities. "It’s gonna end one way or the other. It’s gonna end very soon.”
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Dear Pete Heg-Trash
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has repeatedly attacked anonymous complaints while presenting his campaign against what he considers politically correct military culture as a return to strength, yet there is nothing strong about creating more fear around reporting abuse, harassment, or misconduct.
Oct 02, 2026
Nothing taught me more about the danger of silence in the military than surviving rape twice while wearing the uniform of the country I volunteered to serve, because I learned firsthand how quickly an institution built around honor, courage, and loyalty can become terrifying when the person who has been violated must decide whether speaking up will cost them even more.
Our service members understand that fear, which is why attacks on anonymous reporting should alarm anyone who actually cares about protecting the people who serve.
Being able to report misconduct without immediately exposing yourself can mean the difference between speaking and staying silent when rank, retaliation, career consequences, and the instinct to protect the institution are stacked against you.
Let us stop calling silence discipline, stop calling environmental disregard strength, and stop pretending accountability somehow makes our military weaker.
Once those protections are weakened, the misconduct does not magically disappear; the person experiencing it simply has fewer safe ways to expose it.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has repeatedly attacked anonymous complaints while presenting his campaign against what he considers politically correct military culture as a return to strength.
Yet there is nothing strong about creating more fear around reporting abuse, harassment, or misconduct, especially inside an institution where power and rank shape nearly every part of a service member’s life.
I call that feeding the conditions where rape culture survives, because I know personally what happens when silence becomes easier for an institution than accountability.
Survivors should never have to prove their toughness by enduring abuse quietly.
Disregard for accountability also appears in Hegseth’s approach to another responsibility the military cannot escape: what it does to the land, water, and communities where it operates.
In his own words, “No more climate change worship,” but treating environmental responsibility as weakness ignores the damage military activity has already left behind in American communities.
Service members and Mother Earth have something painful in common: Both have been expected to absorb damage in the name of a mission and remain silent about the scars.
Pollution from military operations has contaminated land and groundwater on Guam, the island where I was born, where decades of military activity have left contamination near an aquifer our people depend upon for drinking water.
Our community here in Tucson knows another version of that story, with PFAS contamination threatening groundwater and military facilities, including Davis-Monthan, identified among the sources requiring investigation and cleanup.
Strength cannot mean demanding unlimited sacrifice from people, communities, and the planet while treating accountability as an inconvenience.
As a veteran, a survivor, and someone born on an island carrying the environmental scars of America's military presence, I cannot separate these issues, because both force us to confront what happens when powerful institutions decide that accomplishing the mission matters more than acknowledging who or what gets harmed along the way.
Bodies can be raped, land can be violated, water can be poisoned, and although those harms are not identical, they grow from a dangerous belief that something valuable can be used, damaged, and discarded because those holding power have decided the cost is acceptable.
Let us stop calling silence discipline, stop calling environmental disregard strength, and stop pretending accountability somehow makes our military weaker.
Enough: No service member, no community, and no piece of Mother Earth should ever be treated as disposable.
xoxo, military members & Mother Earth
P.S. Read the first letters of each paragraph.
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Deep-Dive Investigation Examines Minab School Bombing: ‘One of the Worst US War Crimes Since Vietnam’
“There was no school left,” said the father of a 6-year-old girl killed in the attack. “I thought I was asleep and having a nightmare.”
Sep 30, 2026
Survivors, parents, and first responders provided harrowing firsthand accounts of the US bombing of an elementary school on the first day of the US-Israeli war with Iran as part of a new Drop Site News investigation demonstrating that the school had publicly operated as a civilian institution for more than a decade.
The report, published Wednesday, provides new eyewitness accounts from those who lost loved ones when US Tomahawk missiles hit the Shajareh Tayyebeh School in Minab, which killed 120 children and dozens of others, and has been described as “one of the worst US war crimes since Vietnam.”
“The children were five years old and all they did was yell, ‘Miss! Miss!’ and were crying. I ran to the children. I just said, ‘Get under the table!” recalled preschool teacher Hossniyeh Salem. “I didn’t think they were going to strike the school. I just thought that some place had been hit. I said, ‘Don’t be afraid, sit down.’”
“Two simultaneous sounds. They’re still in my ear. My son even describes them—‘Wooosh, boom! Woosh, boom!’—and then the explosion very close by,” Salem said. “Plaster was falling, the ground was shaking, and at that moment I just looked at my preschool girls and my son, and I said to myself, ‘It’s over. Now is the time when we go under the rubble, it’s going to fall now,’” she continued. “Then there were no more sounds. The class was full of smoke and dust."
Yaghoub Yazdanpanah, a literature teacher at another school about eight miles from Minab, described the moment he learned that the school his 6-year-old daughter, Fatemeh, attended had been bombed.
“I left my classroom, ran home, took my car, and sped to Minab. When I arrived, I said, ‘Oh no!’ The unimaginable had happened," he said. “There was no school left. Two-thirds of the school, maybe more, had been destroyed. Smoke was rising from all over the school. It had turned into rubble. For a moment, I thought I was asleep and having a nightmare."
Yazdanpanah said he already knew the worst had happened well before he received his daughter’s body at an overwhelmed hospital that night.
“We knew our children had been martyred; we knew our children were no longer with us," he said. “When they brought Fatemeh, she was in one piece because she had been in her teacher’s arms [when she died].”
“There was no school left."
The US has still not accepted responsibility for the Minab attack, even though an internal Pentagon investigation has concluded that US forces struck the school using two Tomahawk missiles. In the initial days after the attack, President Donald Trump claimed that Iran had been responsible before backing off the claim, stating, “I just don’t know enough about it.”
Drop Site obtained images of the missile fragments from the site, which an independent weapons inspector said “all appear to be remnants of Tomahawk missiles." Iran is not known to possess Tomahawks. A UN fact-finding mission report released earlier this month determined that the school had been “the intended point of impact" rather than collateral damage.
People are seen scouring the wreckage at the site of the February 28, 2026 bombing of the Shajareh Tayyebeh girls’ elementary school in Minab, Iran. (Photo by Mehr News Agency/Wikimedia Commons)
Adm. Brad Cooper, the commander of US Central Command (CENTCOM) told Congress in May that the school was "located on an active [Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps] cruise missile base."
Wes Bryant, a former senior targeting adviser at the Pentagon, told Drop Site he'd never seen any indication that the school was on an active missile site and explained that even if it was, "it doesn’t matter."
“Those children, all those civilians, are still non-combatants and protected, so it’s really disgusting to hear that," he said. "This wasn’t even fragmentation that hit a school next to another target. This was deliberately targeted very, very clearly and obviously. So at the very least, [it was a] complete mischaracterization of the target.”
There was abundant evidence of the school's civilian use that would have been available to those who conducted the strike. The school was part of a compound that included barracks for the elite IRGC but was redeveloped for civilian use beginning in 2014. It had publicly and officially operated as a school since 2015.
The school had a very active online presence with a website that prominently displayed classroom activities and school events. Meanwhile, satellite imagery captured just two months before the attack showed children standing in the schoolyard outside the building.
An investigation from Bloomberg found that the school had been placed on a list of targets for the war's opening salvo that was assembled in part using the Maven artificial intelligence system developed by Palantir, which reportedly did not classify it as a school.
The UN report emphasized that even if the attack can be boiled down to an intelligence failure, it still likely amounted to a war crime because the US attacked despite readily available evidence that the building was a school, a failure investigators said went “beyond mere negligence” and amounted to recklessness toward the risk of striking civilians.
US President Donald Trump and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth attend a dignified transfer event for US service members killed during operations in the Middle East, at Dover Air Force Base in Dover, Delaware, on July 22, 2026. (Photo by Saul Loeb/AFP via Getty Images)
Hala Rharrit, a career former US Foreign Service officer who spent 17 years at the State Department before resigning in 2024, remains unsatisfied by the government's efforts to downplay the attack as a "mistake."
“There’s no way to say that this was some type of error,” Rharrit told Drop Site. “You’re either saying that our US Military is completely incompetent, that despite the multiple layers of review, everybody messed up—or there was something very, very sinister about this strike.”
According to data from the Human Rights Activists News Agency, the vast majority of US-Israeli strikes during the first 40 days of the war did harm to civilians or civilian infrastructure, contradicting repeated claims that the US “never targets civilians.” At minimum, the data shows at least 1,701 civilians have been killed, but HRANA has stressed that the true death toll is likely substantially higher.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has spent his tenure dissolving guardrails meant to prevent civilian casualties, denouncing "stupid rules of engagement," and saying the military should pursue “lethality” over “legality.” Trump, meanwhile, has repeatedly threatened mass destruction upon Iran, including that the "entire civilization" would "die."
“The administration and Hegseth have made it quite clear that they don’t really care about civilian casualties. That may also have been true of previous bombing campaigns that predate the Trump administration, but it is even more the case than in the past, and they have made it clear that troops do not need to be concerned about consequences,” said Harrison Mann, a former US Army major and intelligence analyst for the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA).
“There is no mystery about what coordinates those missiles hit, and that question would have been answerable on the day of the strikes," he told Drop Site. "The only way that CENTCOM would not know is that they are choosing to be willfully ignorant.”
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Hegseth and His Anti-Woke Military: An Assessment
The hard-nosed approach by the Trump administration and Secretary Hegseth toward the training and deployment of American armed forces is not only unwise and counterproductive. It is a disgrace to the reputation of the United States.
Sep 30, 2026
On September 30, 2025, a swaggering Secretary of Defense (“War”), Pete Hegseth, delivered his “warrior ethos” lecture to the 800 top generals and admirals of the American military, whom he had assembled for a command performance.
One year later, an assessment is called for.
“The military has been forced by foolish and reckless politicians to focus on the wrong things... we became the ‘woke’ department,” he said. We must “remove the social justice, politically correct and toxic ideological garbage,” he fulminated, adding that “serving with fat or unfit or under-trained troops” is a violation, in effect, of the Golden Rule. (You wouldn’t want to share a foxhole with a fat person, so don’t be fat yourself). Henceforth, the “highest standards” must be met. He told his audience that it is “completely unacceptable to see fat generals and admirals.”
Was our first president and commander-in-chief too “woke” for Secretary Hegseth?
Secretary Hegseth would see to it that “grooming standards” would be strictly enforced. “No more beardos!” He wants a “lethal department of war.” Furthermore, “words like bullying and hazing and toxic have been weaponized and bastardized... basic training is being restored to what it should be: scary, tough, and disciplined.”
“We’re empowering drill sergeants to instill healthy fear in new recruits, ensuring that future war fighters are forged... and yes, they can put their hands on recruits.”
In what way has Hegseth’s tough training regimen been helpful in the country’s pursuit of its war with Iran? Probably in no way. A drone operator obviously requires different skills from a WWI or WWII infantryman.
Finally, in his oration, Hegseth announced, “We don’t fight with stupid rules of engagement.” That particular point raises serious questions, discussed later. (The questionable legality of the Iran War itself cannot be discussed in this limited space.)
In his blustering speech, Secretary Hegseth either ignored or was unaware of important critiques published shortly after WWII. During that war, a team of social psychologists conducted for the Research Branch, Information and Education Division of the War Department, an extensive study, consisting of numerous opinion surveys, on the attitudes of American fighting men. It was an attempt to discover the motivations that made men fight. This four-volume study, edited by Samuel A. Stouffer and published in 1949, is known as The American Soldier: Combat and its Aftermath.
The study debunked the myth that discipline will crumble in combat in the absence of terror in training. It further debunked the myth that glorification of trivia (grooming and “spit and polish”) increases combat proficiency. It also shattered the illusion—prevailing in the officer corps at the time—that Black soldiers would prefer to serve under white officers rather than under Black officers.
In 1946, another in-depth military study, known as the Doolittle Board, issued even more striking assessments of officer-enlisted relations in the armed forces. Among other proposals, it recommended that the social distinctions between enlisted soldiers and officers be greatly eased.
Secretary Hegseth’s machismo, his atavistic and simplistic notions of warrior ethos, clearly drive his policy preferences. If he were aware of the Stouffer study or the Doolittle Board, he would likely deem their recommendations as too “woke.”
And yet, they were in step with the American military’s original philosophy of maintaining morale, good order, and discipline. For hundreds of years, army manuals have exhorted officers to recognize the intimate relationship between discipline and morale. Even Baron von Steuben, the Prussian military theorist whose codes were adopted wholesale by the American revolutionary army, realized the importance of morale in armies that reflected the caste systems of 18th-century Europe. These, for example, are some of von Steuben’s “Instructions for the Captain”:
His first object should be, to gain the love of his men, by treating them with every possible kindness and humanity, inquiring into their complaints, and when well founded, seeing them redressed.
The baron’s “Instructions for the Sergeants and Corporals” convey the same message:
In teaching the recruits, they must exercise all their patience, by no means abusing them, but treating them with mildness...
George Washington relied on Baron von Steuben’s manuals. Was our first president and commander-in-chief too “woke” for Secretary Hegseth?
There is an aspect of Hegseth’s bombastic oration which is even more problematical, his proclamation that henceforth, “we... don’t fight with stupid rules of engagement.” This dangerous notion has impelled Hegseth to launch policies which, in the opinions of many lawyers, military and civilian, have led to American officials and military personnel committing murder, war crimes, and crimes against humanity—both in the war against Iran and in the campaign to execute without trial suspected drug traffickers in small boats in the Caribbean.
Although military subordinates must obey all lawful orders or be subject to court-martial for violation of Article 92 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ), they must disobey unlawful orders. What makes an order illegal? When an order is “so manifestly beyond the scope of the superior officer’s authority and the order is so obviously and palpably unlawful as to admit of no reasonable doubt of its unlawfulness,” there is actually a duty to disobey it. (U.S. v. Kinder, 14 CMR 742, 1953). “I was just following orders” in such a case is no defense. Examples of obviously illegal orders are those to target civilians; or abuse trainees; or torture or kill detainees; or otherwise to violate federal law or the Constitution. The prosecutions of Americans for their cruel actions at Mai Lai in the Vietnam War and Abu Ghraib in the Iraq War are situations where the defense of “just following orders” was not successful. In those situations, crucial rules of engagement were not followed. The bottom line: The law requires American soldiers to be reasoning agents, not unquestioning robots. Scaring trainees into unquestioning obedience does not prepare them for modern warfare.
Violations of international law, as embodied in the Geneva Conventions, can also subject a civilian or soldier to criminal prosecution. At least since 1949, the Geneva Conventions have prohibited “cruel treatment and torture” and “outrages upon personal dignity, in particular, humiliating and degrading treatment.”
Since his speech, Secretary Hegseth has announced that under his regime, American troops should “give no quarter,” meaning show no mercy, even to surrendering or disarmed combatants. This policy was applied to the drug-trafficking suspects in the Caribbean who, under Hegseth’s orders, were killed by American military personnel. The excuse given by him and President Donald Trump, is that the drug-runners are combatants in a “war,” which is nonsense. Trump and Hegseth claim they were given legal cover by an official opinion issued by the Office of Legal Counsel. That classified opinion—which purports to justify the killing of drug traffickers without legal proceedings—is strongly disputed by human rights organizations and many others. Unfortunately, it remains classified to this day. In my opinion, like the memo written by John Yoo purporting to render lawful the waterboarding of terrorism suspects during the Iraq War, it will someday be discredited. And the perpetrators of the Caribbean killings might find themselves indicted.
The hard-nosed approach by the Trump administration and Secretary Hegseth toward the training and deployment of American armed forces is not only unwise and counterproductive. It is a disgrace to the reputation of the United States.
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If the AI Executives Are Driving Drunk, We Should Nail Them for It
Remember, these industry leaders are doing what they do for money—and lots of it. They are choosing to endanger the property and lives of others for personal profit. If they mess up, they should be forced to pay a very high price.
Sep 28, 2026
Amidst all the talk of the need for government regulation of AI, there has been too little discussion of the simplest route: criminal liability. The basic story is that the AI companies are being irresponsible in dealing with a product they know to be dangerous. The companies and the people who run them need to know that they face serious monetary risk from letting their little models run wild, and possibly criminal prosecution and jail time.
To be clear, sensible regulation of AI would be desirable. But let’s be serious. We have Pete Hegseth, Sean Duffy, and RFK Jr. all running major government departments. Do we really think having someone like this overseeing AI development would be an improvement?
We do already have laws to deal with harms caused by AI; we just need to be prepared to use them. Again, no one would expect President Trump’s personal lawyer and Attorney General Todd Blanche to take criminal or civil actions against AI in the public interest. If there was a major incident, he would most likely look to initiate a prosecution in pursuit of a payoff for dropping the case. But the law does not begin and end with Donald Trump’s Justice Department.
This isn’t a question of vindictiveness. We all know, the AI boys more than anyone, that AI is potentially very dangerous. If they opt to push full speed ahead, without necessary safeguards, they have to be prepared to face the consequences.
If we can forget about the extinction events that keep our pundits busy, and focus instead on the millions of far more likely disasters that AI could cause, there will almost certainly be plenty of room for state-level prosecutions, as well as civil suits.
To take some hypothetical cases, suppose an AI system manages to hack into a city’s traffic control system, and the resulting chaos leads to a number of car crashes, causing serious injuries and death, in addition to property damage. To take another case, suppose AI falsifies clinical trial data, leading a drug to be approved even though the trials show it to be ineffective or dangerous. Or suppose AI gets inside a bank’s computers and makes a total mess of its records in a way that they cannot be reconstructed. (I know banks almost certainly have backups, but our super-intelligent AI can surely get into the backup records as well.)
I know that each of these disasters is extremely unlikely, but all of them are millions or even billions of times more likely than the extinction events we hear about in the media. And given that there are probably millions of disasters like these that AI could possibly cause, there is a pretty good chance that we will see some serious disaster in the not-too-distant future.
As I noted in an earlier piece, a mistaken report from AI led the Navy to put helicopters in the air to board a Chinese cargo ship that they wrongly believed was carrying parts for Iran’s nuclear program. Fortunately, the information was checked, and the helicopters were called back before there was an actual confrontation, but this was luck. Sooner or later we will see a mistake that is not caught.
It would, of course, be best if an AI disaster never happens, but one practice that will substantially reduce the risk is that Sam Altman, Elon Musk, and the rest of the boys understand that their companies will be fully liable for any harm caused and they personally may face criminal liability. In other words, they may not just lose all their money; they may have to spend much of the rest of their lives in prison.
This isn’t a question of vindictiveness. We all know, the AI boys more than anyone, that AI is potentially very dangerous. If they opt to push full speed ahead, without necessary safeguards, they have to be prepared to face the consequences.
Drunk driving is really an appropriate analogy. Everyone should understand that if they get behind the wheel when they are intoxicated, they hugely increase the probability of an accident. That is why we throw people in jail for it. The same standard should apply to OpenAI, Anthropic, and the rest. If they push ahead with testing without appropriate safeguards, they should be prepared to pay the price, including potential criminal penalties.
Remember, they are doing this for money, lots of it. They are choosing to endanger the property and lives of others for personal profit. If they mess up, they should be forced to pay a very high price. Incentives matter.
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Trump Is Busy Renaming and Remaking the World In His Grotesque Image
Setime before his third term in office, he’ll suddenly begin tearing down the West Wing of the White House (including the Oval Office) and in its place will construct a triumphal statue of—but of course, who else?—himself.
Sep 24, 2026
Honestly, in this strange world of ours, what is there to write about except, of course, Donald Trump?
Oh, well, as a start, I could write about my country’s war with Iran and the way the militaries of the two countries are going after each other’s naval vessels. Oh, wait, that couldn’t be a more Trumpian subject, could it?
So, maybe I could write about great white sharks, which would certainly be cooler to see than “our” president. But what do I know about great white sharks? (Of course, I’m sure you won’t be surprised to learn that, the moment after I wrote that, I put “Trump, Great White Shark” into my search window and promptly came up with a set of pieces beginning with the Palm Beach Post‘s “President Trump Misses Great White Shark Visit to Mar-a-Lago Waters” and The Guardian’s “Trump Is ‘Obsessed’ and ‘Terrified’ of Sharks—But His Fears Are Excessive.”
Sooner or later, once he’s finished with all the cities, states, and politicians, he could, of course, move on to the rest of our vocabulary and I would be able to Trump you rather than stump you when I write my future pieces.
Or maybe, I could write not about the present disaster of a war in the Strait of Trumpmuz, but the next one my country is likely to face, undoubtedly with Turkey—or do I mean Indonesia, or maybe Turkmenistan, or even perhaps Turkwomenistan (a country still to be created, of course, but that’s no reason not to go to war with it)? And all of them could be turned into Trumpific countries. Still, that’s so boringly unpredictably predictable, don’t you think? I mean, as the old line went, war, what is it good for? And the classic answer (if only!): Absolutely nothing! But in the era of Pete Hegseth and crew, that would need to be changed to: Absolutely everything!
Or maybe I could write about the odds that “my” president might be peached—that is, covered in overly ripe fruit, since in a historic first (or do I mean second?), he’s already been impeached twice to distinctly little effect. So why not try that instead? It makes him sound delicious, don’t you think?
Or perhaps I could focus on the future of mail-out voting, since “my” president is already distinctly (and yes, I just can’t help using that word again) determined to severely limit, if not simply do away with, the mail-in version of the same. Or maybe instead, I could deal with his administration’s likely urge to wipe out any chance of the future creation of an Antarctic Report Card about the second fastest-warming (and melting) area on this planet (and its ice sheet that has existed for a mere 30 million years or so), since his crew has already gone after the latest report on the fastest-warming place of all, the Arctic, by—yes, of course!—ending its funding.
Or, hey, how about if I focus instead on the fate of the US military’s privates, since Secretary of War Pete Hegseth has been taking superior care of its leaders who have been endlessly in the news. After all, he’s already fired or blocked the promotion of more than 80 generals and admirals, or about 10% of its high command (and I don’t have the slightest doubt that he’s just getting started). Sooner or later, when all the generals and admirals are gone, he’ll have to move down the ranks, right? I can’t help but believe that, in the end, he and the rest of his crew in Washington will be eager to fully privatize the military and turn themselves into the missing generals and admirals, or do I mean privates first class?
Or, come to think of it, since Donald Trump (labelled by The Guardian‘s Marina Hyde as this planet’s “most tireless freelance cartographer”) has had the urge not just to rename Lake Ontario and the Gulf of Mexico as Lake America and the Gulf of America, but to dub the state of New Mexico as “New America,” how about if I spend a little time on what I’m sure will be his future renaming efforts. I mean, he’s certainly going to rename New York City (where he, like the author of this piece, was born so long ago) Old Trumpian City; and California as Trumpifornia (and, of course, its governor as Gavin OldTrump); and North and South Carolina as North Trump and South Trump, not to speak of Florida as Florump.
Phew! That was one long sentence and yet we’re undoubtedly only at the start of his renaming process. Sooner or later, once he’s finished with all the cities, states, and politicians, he could, of course, move on to the rest of our vocabulary and I would be able to Trump you rather than stump you when I write my future pieces.
Or, for that matter, I could skip to the president’s dance hall (undoubtedly to be known someday as Trump’s rock and roll) for which he’s already torn down the East Wing of that historically less than interesting building, the White House, or the 250-foot Great Triumphal Arch and Military Observation Deck he’s building that will be larger than Paris’s Arc de Triomphe, and instead put my energy into predicting the president’s next major architectural surprise in Washington, DC. Here’s my best guess (and I’ll be shocked if it doesn’t come true): Sometime before his third term in office—and count on him wanting that (to hell with such an ancient and useless document as the Constitution)—he’ll suddenly begin tearing down the West Wing of the White House (including the Oval Office) and in its place will construct a triumphal statue of—but of course, who else?—himself (or rather Himself). It goes without saying that it will be larger not just than the Arc de Triomphe but his own Arch of Triumph. And when he’s done with that, you can count on one thing: There will simply be no way to make our nation’s capital any more statuesque.
Not surprisingly, his White House spokespeople are already praising his construction efforts in Washington, including his magnificently green Trump Memorial Reflecting (or do I mean Deflecting?) Pool. As one of them put it recently, “Thanks to the Builder-in-Chief, no other president has done more to beautify our nation’s interior than President Trump.” (And don’t you find it beyond weird, under the circumstances, that, as The Washington Post reports, “nearly 2 in 3, 65% [of Americans], feel dissatisfied or upset” by his Washington building projects?)
Or what about a possible desire to replace presidentially loathed “birth tourism”—no matter that the Supreme Court last summer ensured babies born here would indeed become US citizens despite every effort by the Trump crew—with something distinctly presidential and much to be loved: “death tourism.” Wouldn’t that be the perfect formula for You Know Who?
Oh, and I don’t think I even mentioned it, but a source within the administration has assured me privately that President Trump is going to end his second term in office and begin his third term—no, the Supreme Court wouldn’t dare stop him!—by renaming himself Donald Trumplincoln and will come to be known in his later years as “Old Don” as his Civil War-era predecessor was known as “Old Abe.” (Whoops, sorry, my mistake! That was an eagle of the Civil War era!) I meant “Honest Abe“ and (Dis)Honest Don.
And none of that, not a bit of it, should seem even faintly surprising from such a distinctly presidential figure.
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'Unforgivable Sin': Pentagon Reportedly 'Hiding' US Deaths in Iran War
"When the government hides the true cost of its war, it misleads the country and dishonors the fallen," said one veterans' group.
Sep 19, 2026
The Trump administration—which calls itself the "most transparent administration in history"—is once again under fire for its lack of transparency after The Washington Post on Friday published a report in which US officials said more American troops have died during the Iran War than the Pentagon has disclosed.
Five officials familiar with the Pentagon's internal casualty accounting told the Post under condition of anonymity that at least 22 US service members have died since Trump launched the Iran War on February 28—four more than the 18 fatalities currently listed in the Pentagon's public Defense Casualty Analysis System, or DCAS. A sixth official put the number at 23.
The officials said that not all of the additional deaths were necessarily caused directly by Iranian attacks, but rather involved US personnel stationed in the Middle East.
The report raises questions regarding transparency, as well as the military's line-of-duty investigations following service member deaths that can affect survivors' benefits.
Retired US Army Brig. Gen. Steve Anderson asked some of those questions in a Friday Substack post directed at Hegseth and calling the reported obfuscation an "unforgivable sin":
- Why are you hiding from the American people and the media?
- Why haven’t you done a press conference in the Pentagon for four months?
- What were the families of the fallen told about the circumstances around the deaths of their loved ones? Were they denied recognition for their loved ones’ service and sacrifice in war?
- Who made the call to hide the number from the American people?
- How many more people have been wounded than we know about?
- What are [you] going to do to make this right?
Responding on social media to the Post report, US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth wrote, "This is DISGUSTING and FAKE. A complete LIE."
"Shame on The Washington Post—they’re worse than Iranian state media," Hegseth added.
Hegseth's denial follows earlier controversies over the Pentagon's casualty reporting.
In July, the department's public database briefly excluded four US service members killed during renewed fighting, even though the Pentagon had separately announced the deaths. Officials subsequently blamed the discrepancy on technical problems.
Also in July The New York Times revealed that the Pentagon hid dozens of US military injuries from Iranian strikes on bases in Jordan.
Sen. Tammy Duckworth (D-Ill.), a disabled Iraq War veteran, wrote on Bluesky in response to the Post report that "22 of our service members have been killed in Trump's illegal war. Not 18 like we were told."
"The Pentagon hid four more heroes' deaths from us for months," she added. "Congress cannot let them get away with this."
To that end, Duckworth and other Democratic lawmakers in both the House and Senate have introduced legislation aimed at preventing the Pentagon from manipulating troop casualty data.
Last month, Duckworth led 17 upper chamber colleagues in introducing the Honoring the Sacrifices of Our Troops in War Act, which her office said came partly in response to the Trump administration's "shameless attempt to downplay the damage done and evade accountability to the American people."
Outgoing Congressman Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) on Thursday separately moved to force a House vote on impeaching Hegseth, accusing the defense secretary of violating provisions of the War Powers Resolution by continuing hostilities without congressional authorization.
After several failed attempts, both houses of Congress in June passed a war powers resolution directing Trump to withdraw US forces from hostilities with Iran. Trump did not comply.
The number of US troops killed and wounded in the Iran War pales in comparison to Iranian casualty figures. Thousands of Iranians—including more than 3,500 civilians, more than 380 of them children—have been killed and tens of thousands more wounded by US and Israeli attacks since February 28, according to Iranian and international officials.
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Trump Says 'Big Decision' Coming on Whether to 'Annihilate' Iran
"Trump waving around 'annihilation' as if he’s God" is "startling to hear," wrote one progressive critic. "He is, after all, batshit crazy."
Sep 17, 2026
President Donald Trump on Thursday said he is weighing whether or not to "annihilate" Iran in a renewed effort to end the illegal 201-day US-Israeli war of choice, musings that came on the heels of a report by United Nations experts who said the United States likely committed war crimes during earlier attacks on the Middle East nation.
"I have a big decision coming up. Do I want to go in and annihilate them, or do I not?" Trump told Axios' Barak Ravid. "It's a big decision. Anything could happen with me."
Ravid said that Trump was referring to the Iranian government. However, the Iranian people have borne the brunt of six-and-a-half months of war and years of deadly economic strangulation.
Trump’s threat came as a United Nations fact-finding mission said there are “reasonable grounds to believe” the United States committed a war crime in two February strikes—one on the Shajareh Tayyebeh School in Minab and another on a sports complex and residential area in Lamerd—that killed a combined total of at least 178 civilians, including 120 children.
The UN experts' report pointed to the Trump administration’s “deprioritization of civilian harm mitigation and of compliance with [international humanitarian law], expressed through public statements by senior US leadership, including the president and the secretary of defense.”
Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth said early in the war that the US would eschew “stupid rules of engagement" meant to protect civilians, while vowing that US forces would rain “death and destruction from the sky all day long.”
Trump has repeatedly expressed his willingness to commit war crimes and atrocities against Iran, including through threats to “completely obliterate” the country's power, energy and water infrastructure and bomb the nation of over 90 million people "back to the Stone Ages."
“If they don’t sign the deal, then the whole country is going to get blown up,” the president said in April while unsuccessfully trying to pressure Tehran into an agreement to end the war. He also said that Iran's “whole civilization will die” if Tehran did not accept his demands.
The UN experts said that while they could not independently verify how many Iranian casualties the US-Israeli war has caused, they have "strong grounds to believe that the true figures for deaths and injuries are significantly higher than the [Iranian] government's reported toll" earlier this year of over 28,000 people killed and wounded.
Responding to the president's latest threat, progressive commentator Heather Digby Parton—who blogs under the name Digby—wrote that "this could all be bluster."
"Trump waving around 'annihilation' as if he’s God is still startling to hear," she added. "But I don’t have the sense that even he believes it anymore. But I would never assume that he won’t. He is, after all, batshit crazy."
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Did Johnson Just Adjourn Congress for 7 Weeks to Avoid Massie's Impeachment Articles Against Hegseth?
"These people are such incredible cowards," said Rep. Pramila Jayapal. "They know that what Pete Hegseth has done, his role in driving us into the war, is absolutely wrong."
Sep 16, 2026
US House Speaker Mike Johnson said Wednesday that with seven weeks to go until Election Day, it was time for lawmakers to "go home to their districts and make the case to the American people"—a day earlier than scheduled.
But with the US public overwhelmingly disapproving of President Donald Trump's war in Iran and demanding accountability for his bombing of boats in the Caribbean Sea, Republicans may be headed home hoping their constituents don't ask questions about those issues, particularly as Johnson (R-La.) faced accusations of ending the House session early in order to avoid a vote pertaining to them.
Johnson announced the early adjournment a day after Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) filed articles of impeachment against Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, arguing in the resolution that Hegseth violated the War Powers Resolution of 1973 by initiating strikes against Iran without authorization from Congress and continuing to attack the country past the 60-day mark set by the law.
He also accused Hegseth of “ignoring laws that minimize civilian casualties," citing an attack that killed more than 150 children and teachers at a school in Minab, Iran, and of conducting an illegal campaign of extrajudicial killings by overseeing dozens of boat bombings in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific Ocean that have killed at least 230 people since last September.
Massie's resolution was privileged, meaning it had to be taken up by the House within two legislative days.
With House members now on their way back to their districts to campaign ahead of the midterm elections, lawmakers will be unable to pursue the impeachment effort until at least November. They are not set to return to Capitol Hill until after Americans vote on November 3.
"These people are such incredible cowards," said Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) of her Republican colleagues. "They know that what Pete Hegseth has done, his role in driving us into the war, is absolutely wrong."
Republicans just CANCELLED votes for tomorrow, the last legislative day before the midterms.
Why? Because they’re afraid we’ll impeach Pete Hegseth. What a bunch of cowards. pic.twitter.com/vTTfNNtpmP
— Rep. Pramila Jayapal (@RepJayapal) September 16, 2026
Johnson derided Massie's resolution as "ridiculous" and "a publicity stunt by someone who wants attention."
“It’s a publicity stunt by someone who wants attention," he said. "It will immediately be tabled, of course, but we probably won’t do that today. We’ll probably do it when we come back. But it’s a stunt. Secretary Hegseth has done an extraordinary job at the Department of War. We’re in the middle of international conflicts right now, and we should not be playing games with national security."
A motion to table a resolution immediately kills the measure without debate.
"We're calling off Congress," said Massie on the House floor Wednesday, "and we're in the majority... I would implore all of us to take it up with the leadership. Why are we going to be denied a debate on whether there should be an impeachment or not?"
Massie: We’re in the majority. Why are we whining about The Save Act? We won the elections. Why are we saying the elections were stolen if we won them all? pic.twitter.com/sab4GGViw3
— Acyn (@Acyn) September 16, 2026
Public polling suggests most Americans likely do not think Hegseth and other top officials are doing an "extraordinary job" regarding the war in Iran, as Johnson claimed.
A survey in late July showed that nearly two-thirds of Americans felt the war was not worth fighting, and an Associated Press poll in June found the same percentage of respondents disapproved of Trump's handling of issues concerning Iran. The war has sent oil and gas prices skyrocketing, and a majority of voters told Reuters/Ipsos in April that they blamed the Trump administration.
Massie noted that Johnson's maneuver would make it harder for supporters of a discharge petition to force a vote on the Epstein Files Transparency Act to gather the 218 signatures they need.
"I thought we’re supposed to be running a government here. Speaker Mike Johnson just sent the House home. Why? Because Rep. Thomas Massie filed articles of impeachment against Pete Hegseth," said Rep. Mike Levin (D-Calif.). "Speaker Johnson, the WEAKEST speaker of all time, was so scared that we had the votes to impeach Hegseth and hold him accountable that he’s sending us all home to make sure it doesn’t happen."
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Massie Files Impeachment Articles Against Hegseth for Illegal Iran War, Boat Murders
"By directing the Department of Defense in a manner that foreseeably dismantled the safeguards necessary to distinguish civilian objects from military objectives, Secretary Hegseth thereby effected the murder of civilians."
Sep 15, 2026
Rep. Thomas Massie on Tuesday filed articles of impeachment against US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth for his roles in waging an illegal war against Iran and conducting a spree of boat bombings that many human rights groups and international law experts consider acts of murder.
Massie (R-Ky.), who earlier this year lost a Republican primary election to a challenger endorsed by President Donald Trump, accused Hegseth of a wide variety of misconduct across a set of eight impeachment articles.
The most prominent allegedly impeachable conduct highlighted by Massie involves the Iran War, which was launched in February without any congressional authorization.
Massie argued that, in carrying out the war, Hegseth violated the War Powers Resolution of 1973, which specified that the president cannot send the US military into combat operations absent "a declaration of war, specific statutory authorization, or a national emergency created by attack upon the United States, its territories or possessions, or its armed forces."
Congress, Massie noted, did not declare war against Iran, nor enact "any specific statutory authorization" for the use of force against the country. Additionally, Massie wrote, "no national emergency had been created by an attack by the Islamic Republic of Iran upon the United States, its territories or possessions, or its armed forces."
Massie said that Hegseth "nevertheless knowingly executed and implemented the order to commence such hostilities," which he described as an abuse of his powers.
The GOP lawmaker argued in a separate impeachment article that Hegseth further violated the law by ignoring a war powers resolution passed earlier this year by both chambers of the US Congress that compelled him to end hostilities with Iran.
In a fourth impeachment article, Hegseth is accused of "ignoring laws that minimize civilian casualties" by tearing up rules of engagement that the defense secretary has openly derided as "stupid."
It was this recklessness, Massie alleged, that led to the deadly US attack on the Shajareh Tayyebeh Elementary School in the city of Minab, Iran, which killed more than 150 schoolchildren and dozen teachers.
"By directing the Department of Defense in a manner that foreseeably dismantled the safeguards necessary to distinguish civilian objects from military objectives," Massie wrote, "Secretary Hegseth thereby effected the murder of civilians and abused the trust of the men and women under his command by requiring them to conduct military operations within a targeting and legal-review system that he had deliberately degraded."
The fifth article of impeachment accuses Hegseth of conducting an unlawful campaign of extrajudicial killings by bombing alleged drug-trafficking vessels in international waters.
Massie said that this campaign sentenced people to death merely on the suspicion of criminal conduct, "without judicial process, without congressional authorization, and without establishing a lawful basis for treating such persons or vessels as military targets."
The result of this, Massie continued, is that Hegseth has anointed himself "the roles of judge, jury, and executioner and asserted a unilateral power to determine who may live and who may die."
"Such a power is foreign to the rule of law," Massie continued, "repugnant to the legal traditions and fundamental values of the United States and the Western world, and contrary to United States law and customary international law."
At least 225 people so far have been killed because of the boat bombing spree.
Other articles of impeachment accuse Hegseth of attempting to suppress free speech by threatening to court marshal Sen. Mark Kelly (R-Ariz.) after he reminded US military personnel that they should not carry out illegal orders; of illegally kidnapping a foreign leader by having the military abduct Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro; and of launching unauthorized combat operations in Yemen.
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