Here we have another twist in the war with Iran. They’ve said *we* are doing something. Considering who ‘leads’ the Pentagon, it’s not a complete surprise. Pete Heageth’s Pentagon is looking nothing like it should. It’s become a shadow of itself. Why has this happened, and what are the causes? Two of them are Trump and Hegseth. It’s not just obvious. It’s blatantly obvious. But why is Iran accusing the Pentagon? Let’s take a look. With gratitude for Common Dreams via, and including Raw Story:
Iran’s foreign minister on Friday accused the Pentagon of deliberately misleading the American public with its formal estimate that the war on Iran has so far cost the US $25 billion—a number that the chief Iranian diplomat said was a fourfold undercount of the conflict’s true price tag.
“The Pentagon is lying,” Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi wrote on social media. “[Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu’s gamble has directly cost America $100 billion so far, four times what is claimed. Indirect costs for US taxpayers are FAR higher. Monthly bill for each American household is $500 and rising fast.”
Now, why is Iran looking after American households? We know what the regime is like and they don’t look after their *own* people, let alone ours. This is strange. Their numbers probably do match the actuality of war costs and our costs. So, is this propaganda? And if so, why? The most obvious guess would be to get Trump and Hegseth out of office. They may be trying to turn America against these two yahoos. Getting them out could lead to a final ceasefire. We already know we’re going to get the short end of the stick on *anything*. We lost, and there is no getting around it.
The Iranian diplomat’s comments came days after the Pentagon’s acting comptroller, Jules Hurst, told US lawmakers under oath that the Trump administration has thus far spent $25 billion on the historically unpopular war of choice.
The New York Times observed that Hurst “did not elaborate on the figure, which was strikingly smaller than the $200 billion the Pentagon had initially requested for the conflict and suggested a major slowdown in expenditures since the start of the war, when officials estimated it had cost more than $11 billion in its first six days.”
Outside analysts’ estimates of the illegal war’s total cost to American taxpayers have varied widely, but most put the number higher than the $25 billion offered by the Pentagon.
Which door do we open to find the truth? It has to be behind one of them. Perhaps it’s the one hiding in the shadows behind Trump and Hegseth. We need to get by them to get to it. And that’s where the problem may lie. It’s really going to take something to get past them. If we get through that door, and Iran is right, what does that say for us? Trump lies. Hegseth lies. We’ve seen examples of this. What we may find is not necessarily something we want to know.
The Center for American Progress, a liberal think tank, estimated earlier this month that the Pentagon was likely to have spent more than $33 billion during the first 39 days of the conflict.
An April 10 assessment released by the conservative American Enterprise Institute after the ceasefire began put the war’s cost between $25 billion and $35 billion.
Independent policy analyst Stephen Semler has estimated that the US spent nearly $29 billion on the Iran war during just the first two weeks of the conflict—an average of $2.1 billion per day.
“Hegseth lied to Congress when he said the Iran war has cost $25 billion,” Semler wrote Thursday on social media. “It cost more than that in the first two weeks.”
Why is this not a surprise from the machismo white male norm Hegseth thinks is necessary? Hegseth doesn’t think about anything but his image and “Secretary of War” crap. He‘s been doing a ‘wonderful’ job with this war, and don’t let anyone else tell you otherwise. There’s a problem with that, and it’s called no real plan for the Iran war – just throw bombs and missiles at the country.
If they had gone in with a surgical strike against the regime as they did in Venezuela, that would have been one thing. It would be just like Desert Storm – go in, do the thing, get out. There may be a sneaking admiration for Desert Storm, even years later. But we are now stuck in an eternal war. Trump and Iran are holding the country hostage. Wonderful.
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