{"id":3554,"date":"2026-08-04T03:34:10","date_gmt":"2026-08-04T07:34:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/vr-news.net\/?p=3554"},"modified":"2026-08-04T03:34:10","modified_gmt":"2026-08-04T07:34:10","slug":"you-sirs-are-the-duplicitous-murderous-failures","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vr-news.net\/?p=3554","title":{"rendered":"You Sirs Are the Duplicitous Murderous Failures"},"content":{"rendered":"<div><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.commondreams.org\/media-library\/a-pro-iran-group-was-posting-lego-themed-anti-war-videos.jpg?id=67534642&amp;width=1245&amp;height=700&amp;coordinates=258,0,259,0\"><\/p>\n<p>More madness from the surreal saga of a nuclear-armed Iran oscillating between &#8220;obliterated&#8221; and &#8220;threatening our families&#8221; so we have to obliterate it though we just agreed to help nuclear-arm the brutes behind 9\/11 so go figure. Meanwhile, the Pentagon pursues a gazillion bucks and testosterone-ripped troops even as a flailing president insists the last dead troops all said &#8220;very strongly&#8221; to keep fighting right before he odiously covered up their deaths so others would. Head-spinning, soul-killing.<\/p>\n<p>To date, &#8220;Emperor Commodus of Covfefe&#8217;s&#8221; illegal, disatrous, dim-witted Iran &#8220;excursion,&#8221; a mangling of &#8220;incursion&#8221; and global clusterfuck with no clear mission, strategy, end goal or clue, has <a href=\"https:\/\/www.reuters.com\/world\/us\/trump-witness-ret...\" target=\"_blank\">killed<\/a> over 3,500 Iranians, many of them women and children, wounded over 26,500, and razed much of that country&#8217;s infrastructure, including fresh water sources. At least 18 U.S. troops have been killed, with up to 500 wounded. A quarter of the world\u2019s oil is held hostage across two vital straits, at least 70% of Americans oppose the war, recession-level prices here loom, and rage, especially among Muslim nations, is palpable, perhaps nudged along by a brilliant Iranian social-media <a href=\"https:\/\/www.newyorker.com\/culture\/infinite-scroll\/...\" target=\"_blank\">campaign &#8211; <\/a>&#8220;ONE VENGEANCE FOR ALL&#8221; &#8211; that tied America&#8217;s latest atrocity to those of the past, from Native Americans, &#8220;stolen blacks&#8221; and Vietnamese villagers to Abu Ghraib, Gaza and Epstein Island.<\/p>\n<p>In the bleak wake of eight missed deadlines, 28 empty claims of a &#8220;deal,&#8221; several failed ceasefires and ongoing blather of a mythical &#8220;victory&#8221; on the horizon, the war is now widely seen as militarily, politically and morally &#8220;unwinnable,&#8221; and even U.S. money, always there for calamitous wars, is running low. Thus did greasy dunk-tank clown and strung-tight &#8220;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.com\/news\/articles\/cdd9zpj13q9o\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\">warfighter&#8221; <\/a>zealot Pete Hegseth appear before Congress last week to plead for a profane $67 billion more in emergency funds &#8211; part of a <em>$1.15 trillion<\/em> defense bill, a 44%, $454 billion increase &#8211; added to the $37.5 billion he&#8217;s already squandered in the name of a vague &#8220;generational investment,&#8221; maybe to get the Strait of Hormuz closed again? Par for the inept course, only Pete, fired from two non-profits for mishandling their finances and adroit at blaming others for bad decisions, seems surprised the money&#8217;s run out.<\/p>\n<p>Maybe that&#8217;s &#8217;cause at the start of the Iran misadventure he was so busy <a href=\"https:\/\/www.ms.now\/rachel-maddow-show\/maddowblog\/i-guess-trump-gives-wrong-response-about-possible-iranian-reprisals-on-u-s-soil\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\">posting<\/a> <strong><\/strong>braggadocious <strong><\/strong>war porn, &#8220;some of the most loser shit ever,&#8221; of tacky bellicose video games cut in with real carnage from Iran &#8211; war=<em><\/em><em>Call of Duty<\/em> &#8211; and delivering bombastic briefings to crow about annihilating the enemy &#8220;without mercy&#8221; in the name of &#8220;real warriors.&#8221; Those briefings have now been quietly &#8220;replaced by a vacuum.&#8221; Frantic to control a grim political narrative, he&#8217;s held no briefings since May, emptied the Pentagon&#8217;s press corps of everyone but right-wing hacks, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.reuters.com\/business\/media-telecom\/trump-administration-puts-new-limits-reporters-pentagon-2025-05-24\/\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\">restricted <\/a>access in ways large and small, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/business\/2026\/03\/11\/hegseth-press-briefings-photos-iran\/\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\">banned <\/a>&#8220;unflattering&#8221; images of himself &#8211; oh vanity thy name is lame snowflake &#8211; and otherwise <a href=\"https:\/\/thesteadystate.org\/\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\">treated <\/a>America&#8217;s vital free press as an enemy to be subdued, defeated or at least hoodwinked in order to obscure his own lies, failures, abuses and all-round buffoonery.<\/p>\n<p>By all accounts, Hogsbreath has been serving more as showboating <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theatlantic.com\/magazine\/2026\/09\/pete-hegseth-workout-videos-fitness\/687955\/\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\">fitness influencer<\/a> than sober head of a functional military. He now presides over a largely <a href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/national-security\/2026\/07\/21\/pentagon-sinking-billions-into-iran-is-quickly-running-short-cash\/\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\">broken<\/a> Pentagon where morale is dismal, finances are strained, readiness is collapsing and care for troops, veterans and their families is at historic lows. Within the ranks, he&#8217;s derided as an out-of-his-depth, D-list pretender and &#8220;fake-ass manly man&#8221; who looks like a Ken doll &#8220;stored too close to the furnace,&#8221; relishes lecturing generals, and &#8220;dresses like he&#8217;s on <em>The Love Boat&#8221;<\/em> &#8211; hair gel, makeup, showy pocket hanky resembling military honors &#8211; while somehow disastrously managing to kill 170 Iranian schoolgirls on the <em>first day <\/em>of a misbegotten war he still insists is &#8220;a historic, overwhelming victory.&#8221; From Jeff Tiedrich: &#8220;He&#8217;s what would<a href=\"https:\/\/www.jefftiedrich.com\/p\/lets-all-just-enjoy...\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\"> happen <\/a>if arrogance and an elevated blood-alcohol level became a real boy.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>In a &#8220;beyond Strangelovian&#8221; move, that blustering boy recently responded to the multiple crises of his Dept. of Deep Masculine Insecurity  <a href=\"https:\/\/www.jezebel.com\/pete-hegseth-didnt-order-a-makeup-studio-just-a-room-with-a-directors-chair-mirror-and-makeup-light\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\">with <\/a>a bonkers video from def not his makeup studio, <a href=\"https:\/\/x.com\/SecWar\/status\/2077425458430230838?s=20\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\">titled <\/a>&#8220;The High-T Department of War,&#8221; announcing a new program to ensure troops have enough testosterone to stay &#8220;on the leading edge of lethality.&#8221; He&#8217;s evidently unaware any guy who declares he&#8217;s &#8220;high-T&#8221; is probs<em> not<\/em> &#8211; &#8220;Real gangsta *ss people don&#8217;t flex nuts&#8221;; also, that behind most war crimes is too much testosterone and a failed moral compass, today&#8217;s military doesn&#8217;t do much hand-to-hand combat, studies show testosterone <a href=\"https:\/\/www.scientificamerican.com\/article\/strange-but-true-testosterone-alone-doesnt-cause-violence\/\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\">doesn&#8217;t <\/a>help focus, fatigue, memory or well-being, and &#8220;High-T For Better Killing&#8221; is maybe not a great slogan. Still, the guy fixated on &#8220;the highest male standard&#8221; is<a href=\"https:\/\/apnews.com\/article\/hegseth-pentagon-testos...\" target=\"_blank\"> calling for <\/a>mandatory annual screening of those over 30; under 30, it&#8217;s voluntary. <\/p>\n<p>The general <a href=\"https:\/\/bsky.app\/profile\/did:plc:ny5mscvguz4r636nekozpqac\/post\/3mqrb7lonec25?ref_src=embed&amp;ref_url=https%253A%252F%252Fwww.democraticunderground.com%252F100221379974\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\">response<\/a> to this very cool plan has been&#8230;mixed. Many noted the discrepancy between his strident insistence on freedom from governments making our medical decisions &#8211; hence ending a decades-old flu vaccine mandate (until an outbreak led to its quiet reversal) and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.npr.org\/2026\/06\/02\/g-s1-125323\/pentagon-transgender-troops\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\">gender-affirming health care, <\/a>which is why a judge may overturn it &#8211; and his railing against beards, fat troops, high-ranking <a href=\"https:\/\/apnews.com\/article\/military-women-defense-hegseth-combat-916d50a7b465ccfea1aeb13bb91064b3\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\">women <\/a>and people of color. Women decried flaky policy decisions inspired by &#8220;the far corners of the manosphere&#8221; or the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.commondreams.org\/news\/rfk-jr-health-crises\" target=\"_self\">ravings <\/a>of RFK Jr.; some suggested he replace salutes with chest bumps and &#8220;Sir&#8221; with &#8220;Bro&#8221;; others wondered who&#8217;ll be screening Pete &#8220;for being a dick.&#8221; Above all, especially after last week&#8217;s hearing, a broad consensus has emerged that no amount of testosterone pumped into his body will render him even remotely qualified for his job.<\/p>\n<p>Confronted with lawmakers <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=QN-R3spZMok&amp;t=3s\" target=\"_blank\">questioning<\/a> yet more money for a debacle, Pete blustered, stuttered, sneered, fear-mongered about radical Islamists &#8220;coming for our families&#8221; with nuclear weapons &#8220;to hold us at issue (sic).&#8221; He thundered Jack Reed &#8211; West Point, Harvard, veteran, professor &#8211; should respect &#8220;the historic nature of what (Trump&#8217;s) undertaking&#8221;; Reed snapped, &#8220;He should be praised for starting a war without authority?&#8221; He shrieked at Jon Ossoff for calmly listing the multiple times he&#8217;s lied &#8220;Iran\u2019s military had been, quote, destroyed.&#8221; When Gary Peters cited those lies and the 30 times he&#8217;s declared what&#8217;s clearly &#8220;a complete failure&#8221; an &#8220;overwhelming victory,&#8221; Pete screeched the word failure &#8220;smears the sacrifice of the troops&#8221; (sic) and &#8220;shame on you.&#8221; He didn&#8217;t use it about the troops, Peters retorted, but their leaders: &#8220;You, sir, are the failure. You don&#8217;t have a strategy.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Finally Hegseth, the model avatar for a regime that never accepts responsibility for anything, laid the blame for a Pentagon famed for funding atrocities abroad with little to no accountability seeking $1.5 trillion more in blood money on&#8230;Biden and his \u201cgross negligence.\u201d Gross, indeed: \u201cYou cannot inherit a war you started.\u201d Dems balked at an obscene price tag that dwarfs even the Iran debacle, noting it includes $800 million for the National Guard to keep pointlessly patrolling D.C, over $1bn to patrol the southern border which is DHS\u2019 job, $900 million to illegally bomb more boats in the Caribbean etc. Also quietly stuck in there was the vile Save America Act (more sic) to further restrict voting, and the random horror of a move to <a href=\"https:\/\/www.commondreams.org\/tag\/technology\" target=\"_self\">establish <\/a>a joint US-Israel tech initiative so we can <a href=\"https:\/\/zeteo.com\/p\/israel-arm-sales-end-proposal-scam\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\">further integrate<\/a> our military with Israel&#8217;s universally admired genocidal regime. Still, it passed, barely.<\/p>\n<p>Defense bills tend to win broad bipartisan support, but the House barely <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/us-news\/2026\/jul\/22\/us-house-defense-bill-iran-war\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\">squeezed <\/a>through a $1.15 trillion version of this insane one with the help of six craven Dems, including Maine&#8217;s fucking Jared Golden. In better news, they also <a href=\"https:\/\/www.commondreams.org\/news\/another-iran-war...\" target=\"_blank\">passed<\/a> a second, largely symbolic but heartening resolution to end the war, with four Repubs joining them. In the Senate, the measure was blocked, <a href=\"https:\/\/thehill.com\/homenews\/senate\/5986145-senate-iran-war-resolution\/\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\">47-49<\/a>, by fucking John Fetterman. Also last week, the US made a deal to help the Saudis &#8211; of hacksaws and 9\/11 &#8211; <a href=\"https:\/\/apnews.com\/article\/trump-saudi-arabia-nucl...\" target=\"_blank\">set up<\/a> a civilian nuclear program, despite MAGA terror of Nukes For Muslims! (see war in Iran, whose painstaking <a href=\"https:\/\/bsky.app\/hashtag\/JCPOA\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\">deal <\/a>Trump tore up). Despite longtime fears of a nuclear race in the Middle East, Trump <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/2026\/jul\/23\/what...\" target=\"_blank\">said<\/a> they have to join the &#8220;very respected&#8221; Abraham Accords with Israel and sign a hollow &#8220;safeguards agreement&#8221; with a pinky promise of &#8220;no enrichment of material!&#8221; So no worries. <\/p>\n<p>Still, some were worried, also enraged. The folks at<em> I Fucking Love Australia <\/em>were already some<a href=\"https:\/\/substack.com\/@ifloz\" target=\"_blank\"> pissed <\/a>at Admiral USS Bigly<em> <\/em>and his 271 Republicans, &#8220;you spineless, belly-crawling, yellow-bellied fucking grubs&#8221; and &#8220;geography-proof fucking muppets who can&#8217;t count past their own indictments,&#8221; not one of whom will stand up to a doddering &#8220;windbag at the arse end of his miserable sex-offending, pedo-loving, decomposing life&#8221; as a fifth of the world&#8217;s oil remains bottled up behind Hormuz, just like &#8220;HIS OWN JOINT CHIEFS WARNED HIM,&#8221; using small words and a hand puppet. With Australia down to 29 days of vital diesel in reserve, they fume, &#8220;You lot couldn&#8217;t poll your collective vertebrae and build a fucking prawn&#8230;Do your job.&#8221; And that was before last week&#8217;s Houthi <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cnbc.com\/2026\/07\/23\/iran-war-us-trump-houthis-red-sea-oil.html\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\">attack<\/a> by &#8220;a militia in sandals&#8221; on two Saudi oil tankers in the Red Sea for breaching their naval blockade. <\/p>\n<p>The bold move by a ragtag militia from the Middle East&#8217;s poorest country, armed with &#8220;cheap hardware from a rusty shed &#8211;  drones, hand-me-down missiles and a Telegram account&#8221; &#8211; prompted the sages at <em> IFLA<\/em> to <a href=\"https:\/\/ifloz.substack.com\/p\/trump-just-walked-thr...\" target=\"_blank\">offer <\/a>a cogent, useful backstory on just what&#8217;s going down in a volatile, &#8220;centuries-deep cauldron of grievance&#8221; into which &#8220;waddles Napoleon Blownapart, fresh from a Bibi slideshow in the Situation Room, convinced he can win a regional war with vibes and a Sharpie.&#8221; They began by citing the Saudis&#8217; &#8220;one genuinely clever move of the war&#8221;: When Hormuz shut down, they were ramming up to 3.5 million barrels of oil a day, far more than usual, through the critical Asia\/Europe escape hatch of Bab Al Mandeb&#8217;s east-west pipeline to Yanbu on the Red Sea. Then, &#8220;The Houthis just bricked it the fuck up &#8211; they welded the back door of the global oil market shut.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Pundits call Yemen&#8217;s Houthis Iran &#8220;proxies,\u201d but &#8220;they&#8217;ve got their own grievances, which tell you where this war is headed.&#8221; <em> IFLA<\/em> &#8220;<a href=\"https:\/\/ifloz.substack.com\/p\/trump-just-walked-thr...\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\">follows <\/a>the thread all the way back, since apparently nobody in the White House owns a ball of string.&#8221; To Houthis and hundreds of millions more, &#8220;This is now a defensive war against an attack on Muslim nations,&#8221; and &#8220;you cannot drone-strike a conviction.&#8221; See Vietnam, Afghanistan, ISIS etc. Not inside that tent: Saudi Arabia, who &#8220;picked the wrong side of (their) religion,&#8221; watched Gaza flattened and only checked their wealth fund balance; now the Houthis &#8220;declared them fair game, and no one is holding (a) vigil for them.&#8221; Righteous bottom <a href=\"https:\/\/ifloz.substack.com\/p\/trump-just-walked-thr...\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\">line<\/a>: &#8220;Why is the region on fire? Israel. Occupation, annexation, settlements, the slow-motion theft (that) manufactures resistance. Hamas and Hezbollah didn\u2019t fall out of the sky.  Dispossession built them, brick by bloody brick.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Br<strong><\/strong>illiant strategist Trump &#8220;surveyed that flawless 0-4 record of American wars of choice, a historical record so grim you could read it by Braille, and thought, you know what this list needs? Iran, plus a bonus round against mountain fighters in Yemen who&#8217;ve never once lost.&#8221; He thought the Houthis no longer wanted to fight; now, he&#8217;s &#8220;disappointed&#8221; and &#8220;cranked up the rhetoric with his 76th ultimatum.&#8221; Meanwhile, on &#8220;planet fucken consequences,&#8221; oil prices <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nbcnews.com\/business\/markets\/oil-prices-rise-red-sea-attacks-houthis-saudi-trump-iran-war-rcna588851\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\">spiked<\/a> to over $100 a barrel amidst market chaos, and &#8220;the dumbest cunt that ever fumbled the world\u2019s most dangerous military operation opened the gates of Hell with his own two tiny clay-colored hands.&#8221; Or more accurately the Gate of Tears, Bab el-Mandeb in English. &#8220;The old sailors named it for the ships it drowned,&#8221; notes <em>IFLA<\/em>. &#8220;Turns out it was just waiting all these centuries for a presidency worthy of the title.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Still, he blunders on. The same day he again <a href=\"https:\/\/newrepublic.com\/post\/213357\/donald-trump-tries-claim-dead-troops-iran-good-thing\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\">boasted <\/a>his war has *only* killed 18 U.S. troops &#8211; there&#8217;s <a href=\"https:\/\/truthsocial.com\/@realDonaldTrump\/posts\/116961030891139357\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\">a chart<\/a>! &#8211; vs. &#8220;hundreds of thousands&#8221; &#8211; actually 58,220, none him &#8211; in Vietnam, he went to Dover for the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.reuters.com\/world\/us\/trump-witness-return-us-soldiers-killed-iran-war-2026-07-22\/\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\">dignified transfer<\/a> of four Americans just killed in <a href=\"https:\/\/www.centcom.mil\/MEDIA\/PUBLIC-RELEASES\/Article\/4549635\/centcom-statement-on-recently-fallen-missing-us-service-members\/\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\">an Iran attack<\/a> at a Jordan airbase. He <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=rAkTg7TfHSY\" target=\"_blank\">told<\/a> reporters he was en route to &#8220;honor great heroes, actually.&#8221; Then, in a &#8220;next-level ghastly&#8221; move, he put his own vile words in their young dead mouths to <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=rAkTg7TfHSY\" target=\"_blank\">claim<\/a><a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=rAkTg7TfHSY\">,<\/a> &#8220;All of them said, very strongly, we cannot let Iran have a nuclear weapon.&#8221; Appalled <a href=\"https:\/\/bsky.app\/profile\/did:plc:4llrhdclvdlmmynkwsmg5tdc\/post\/3mrahte7kd72n?ref_src=embed&amp;ref_url=https%253A%252F%252Fwww.huffpost.com%252Fentry%252Fdonald-trump-fallen-troops-comment-backlash_n_6a61addce4b0f1b7fc513b0\" target=\"_blank\">responses: <\/a>&#8220;Did they have tears in their eyes? Did they ask why we need to destroy their nuclear program when we&#8217;ve already done it five times? Vastly more plausible: They said &#8216;What the fuck are we doing here?&#8217; or &#8216;What the fuck is wrong with you?&#8217; and, Can any journalist ask him to name two of the fallen soldiers? Or hell, name two of his kids?&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>We can <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/2026\/jul\/23\/iran...\" target=\"_blank\">name <\/a>them: Sgt. Michael Swinton 30, of North Carolina, father to two kids 4 and 6, First Lt. Tyler Feehan, 25, of Hawaii, weeks away from earning his MBA, Sgt Angel Rampersad, 28, of New York, and Pvt. Isabella Gonzales, 19, of Texas. Hours after the ceremony &#8211; where the guy who never bothered to know their names gazed blankly, blue suit gaudy among black suits and bowed heads &#8211; he went to a MAGA rally at a Georgia high school where he sweated and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=CwGFjxseFE0\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\">babbled<\/a>: &#8220;We had transgender for everybody, ravaging through our cities,&#8221; &#8220;We don&#8217;t need the Hormuz Street in our <em><a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=jl4QcSvFen0\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\"><\/a><\/em><a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=jl4QcSvFen0\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\">skirmish&#8230;<\/a>They&#8217;re not ready to make a deal. They&#8217;ll be ready soon,&#8221; &#8220;We&#8217;ll pass the great healthcare plan. It&#8217;s called Our Great Healthcare Plan,&#8221; &#8220;The communists want to <a href=\"https:\/\/x.com\/atrupar\/status\/2080023499112857762\" target=\"_blank\">blow up <\/a>Mt. Rushmore&#8221; (boos), &#8220;I fought Ossoff before (boos) and we won&#8230;He reminds me of Pinky Herman.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>The newly dead, wholly unreal suckers and losers to a narcissist incarnate, were clearly far from what passes for the remains of his mind. That obliviousness reflects what former Sec. of Defense and CIA director Leon Panetta charged is a &#8220;deliberate effort to <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/us-news\/ng-interactive...\" target=\"_blank\">withhold <\/a>information from the American people, a shameful approach to sharing the responsibility we all have (in) a war.&#8221; Speaking of a <em>New York Times <\/em><a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2026\/07\/20\/us\/politics\/tro..\" target=\"_blank\">report <\/a><a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2026\/07\/20\/us\/politics\/tro..\">t<\/a>he Pentagon suppressed news of dozens of military injuries &#8211; which the regime called \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/x.com\/SeanParnellASW\/status\/2079204590176940302?s=20\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\">baseless and malicious<\/a>\u201d but anyway they&#8217;re not &#8220;strictly required&#8221; to publicize them &#8211; Panetta said officials are in essence &#8220;challenging the press to find what\u2019s really happening, and they will.&#8221; &#8220;They can dodge, bob and weave,&#8221; he said of a long, base  tradition in American politics, &#8220;but my experience is that no matter how much you try to hide it, in the end, the truth comes out.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The truth, <a href=\"https:\/\/substack.com\/redirect\/6a239a0b-56d3-470a-a5a7-14a706e566ba?j=eyJ1IjoibDhod24ifQ.5jEjeLiJZS5OfHG4v_xEBlfZCsRwcX2P4Vv9vuux9BQ\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\">says <\/a>James Talarico: &#8220;We are closing schools and hospitals in this country so we can bomb schools and hospitals in other countries&#8221; &#8211; and working hard to hide it. The latest proof, again from the <em>Times<\/em> in a rare, welcome burst of <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2026\/07\/23\/us\/politics\/ira...\" target=\"_blank\">journalism<\/a>: The Pentagon&#8217;s Casualty Analysis website just <a href=\"https:\/\/dcas.dmdc.osd.mil\/dcas\/conflictCasualties\/oefu\/byMonth\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\">lowered <\/a>the number of troop deaths from 18 to 14, with the four <a href=\"https:\/\/www.war.gov\/News\/News-Stories\/Article\/Article\/4552653\/nations-leaders-honor-the-fallen-during-dignified-transfer\/\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\">names<\/a> just brought home scrubbed from the list. Garbled rationales ranged from deaths after Trump&#8217;s April ceasefire mean no war\/no deaths to &#8220;site errors due to a temporary <a href=\"https:\/\/x.com\/SeanParnellASW\/status\/2080467772694265963?s=20\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\">data disruption <\/a>(with) anomalies being resolved.&#8221; Days later, they&#8217;re still missing. Michael Swinton&#8217;s widow Jamiah, asked if she had any details on the disappeared names,<a href=\"https:\/\/transcripts.cnn.com\/show\/ebo\/date\/2026-07-24\/segment\/01\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\"> said<\/a> nobody has reached out: &#8220;I kind of don\u2019t have words for that.\u201d We don&#8217;t either. &#8220;They died serving our country,&#8221; <a href=\"https:\/\/x.com\/BillKristol\/status\/20804621352519027...\" target=\"_blank\">wrote <\/a>Bill Kristol. &#8220;They should be honored, not erased.&#8221; In sorrowful fact, we say they died for little besides a sick con man&#8217;s lies. For that we are truly sorry. Remember who to blame.<\/p>\n<p><em>Update:<\/em> Jesus these inept hacks and clowns can&#8217;t even <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/us-news\/2026\/jul\/26\/pentagon-iran-war-troop-deaths-casualty-report\" target=\"_blank\">keep track <\/a>of how many gullible young people&#8217;s lives they&#8217;ve fucked up in the name of their imperialist misadventures. Now, after their data was &#8220;quietly updated,&#8221; it&#8217;s 18 killed and 624 wounded. Do better, or for the love of God and gullible young people&#8217;s lives just fucking stop.<\/p>\n<p class=\"shortcode-media shortcode-media-rebelmouse-image\"> <img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"The \" class=\"rm-shortcode\" data-rm-shortcode-id=\"c8b81d52ad6709708ccaececb596bed9\" data-rm-shortcode-name=\"rebelmouse-image\" id=\"f4510\" loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.commondreams.org\/media-library\/the.jpg?id=67535482&amp;width=980\"> <small class=\"image-media media-caption\" placeholder=\"Add Photo Caption...\">The &#8220;anomalies&#8221;:  Feehan, Gonzales, Swinton, Rampersad<\/small><small class=\"image-media media-photo-credit\" placeholder=\"Add Photo Credit...\">Photos from U.S. Army<\/small><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>More madness from the surreal saga of a nuclear-armed Iran oscillating between &#8220;obliterated&#8221; and &#8220;threatening our families&#8221; so we have to obliterate it though we just agreed to help nuclear-arm the brutes behind 9\/11 so go figure. Meanwhile, the Pentagon pursues a gazillion bucks and testosterone-ripped troops even as a flailing president insists the last [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"registered_only","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[45],"tags":[742],"class_list":["post-3554","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ciencia-y-tecnologia","tag-vr-news-net"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vr-news.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3554","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vr-news.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vr-news.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vr-news.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vr-news.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3554"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/vr-news.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3554\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vr-news.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3554"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vr-news.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3554"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vr-news.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3554"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}