Donald Trump disrespects solemn September 11, ceremonies by throwing a temper tantrum because he cannot give a speech at ground zero

On Friday, the 25th anniversary of the September 11, 2001 attack on New York City's twin towers, the Pentagon and the terrorist highjacked airplane crash in Pennsylvania, is a milestone memorial. Americans will remember the terrorism attacks that took at least 2,977 lives on September 11, 2001. The deadliest attack on the United States of America, 9/11 is seared indelibly in our nation’s memory. Editorial Board opinion in the Sun Sentinel.

NEW YORK – SEPTEMBER 11, 2001: (SEPTEMBER 11 RETROSPECTIVE) Smoke pours from the twin towers of the World Trade Center after they were hit by two hijacked airliners in a terrorist attack September 11, 2001 in New York City. (Photo by Robert Giroux/Getty Images)

As with another day of infamy at Pearl Harbor nearly 60 years earlier, just about everyone still living can recall where they were and what they were doing when they heard about it.

Once again, the nation’s defenses were down, beguiled by a presumption of invulnerability.

The memorial services this week are an occasion to renew the vow “Never again.”

The reasons to remember:😔  More importantly, they honor the nearly 3,000 men, women and children who paid the highest possible price on 9/11. They are the reasons to remember.

Most of the victims, including 343 New York City firefighters, will be honored at the site of the World Trade Center, the first of the terrorists’ targets, where hijacked airplanes destroyed the iconic twin towers on a Tuesday morning.

Other ceremonies will be at the Pentagon and at the Flight 93 National Memorial near Shanksville, Pa., which credits the passengers and crew who fought their hijackers with saving the U.S. Capitol.

All four living former presidents, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, Barack Obama and Joe Biden, plan to attend the New York City ceremony at Ground Zero.

An unseemly Trump boycott, Donald Trump does not plan to attend. Insead, Trump is scheduled to be at the Pentagon ceremony instead. That’s despite his advance team having scouted the New York site. Vice President JD Vance will represent him there.

As the New York Times told readers, Trump’s choice bespeaks several of his unsavory traits, specifically vanity, petulance, arrogance and narcissism. The paper said his snubbing of the event is because he wouldn’t be allowed to give a speech.

Trump will speak at the Pentagon, where he also spoke on September 11, 2025. He’s the boss. Nobody would stop him from being the center of attention there — certainly not Pete Hegseth.

A verbal hissy fit:  Trump threw a verbal hissy fit over the Times’ article, larding a social media post with insults aimed at Maggie Haberman, one of the reporters who wrote it.

It never seems to occur to him that the louder and more vituperative his outbursts, the more they confirm what he’s trying to deny. A prudent politician would have tried to deflate the issue with a simple “not true.”

The White House cover story makes it worse. He’s scheduled to depart the next day for his golf course in Ireland for the British Open tournament. Leaving from any of the major New York area airports would disrupt more traffic than a departure from Washington, so they say.

But the inconvenience to civilian air travel in the vicinity of New York never seems to occur to him when he flies, often, to his golf course in Bedminster, N.J., or to attend events in the city, such as the U.N. General Assembly.

Once again, taxpayers will foot the bill for Air Force One and his large retinue so Trump can pump up the patronage and profits at one of his properties.

It’s just as well, perhaps, that he will not be at Ground Zero Friday. It’s a pity that we have a president whose presence would detract, in many eyes, from the dignity of the event and the memory of the victims.

Unfinished business:  Friday would not be the appropriate moment, but there needs to be a renewed discussion on the legacy of 9/11 — on what has been accomplished or remains undone 25 years later.

Al Qaeda, the terrorist organization responsible, was driven from Afghanistan, its leadership decapitated, the chief planner of 9/11 put in prison. But its remnants persist in scattered forms around the Middle East, a threat not to be taken lightly.

The lessons of the unnecessary war in Iraq and the overlong presence in Afghanistan failed to deter Trump from plunging the U.S. into a poorly planned, uncalled for war with Iran for which there is no end in sight.

And trials have yet to be held for four of the five men accused of the 9/11 plot — a fifth has been found mentally incompetent — who have been held in U.S. custody since 2002, and 2003. The self-proclaimed mastermind, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, is scheduled for trial at Guantanamo Bay in 2028.

His confessions after prolonged torture by the CIA have been ruled inadmissible, properly so. That, too, is a lesson to be remembered.

Since 2021, the New York 9/11 anniversary planners have not allowed speeches by any politicians. The ceremony is solemnly devoted to reading the names of those who died there. The silent presence of dignitaries should suffice.

That will be especially moving on Biden’s part, considering he is suffering from metastasized cancer.

The Sun Sentinel Editorial Board

Donald Trump and "Whiskey" Pete Hegseth are destroying U.S. Military moral with promotion denials and selective advancement criteria

Calmes:  Hegseth is purging people of color. Trump’s war is killing them.

Echo opinion published in The Mercury News by Jackie Calmes.

Pete (Whiskey) Hegseth and Trump are stripping diversity from top military ranks even as women and minorities carry the casualty burden.

Need another metric to show that, for Donald Trump, “Make America Great Again” means regressing to a 1950s-style white patriarchy? Probably not. But here’s a good-bad one for you, marking the deplorable progress of Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s war on diversity in the leadership ranks of the nation’s military:

Hegseth’s virtually unprecedented and probably illegal blocking of promotions for high-ranking female officers in the armed services in 2026 has helped produce the lowest percentage of such nominations for women’s advancement in this century, including zero — zero — for female officers in the Navy, according to a recent data analysis by the New York Times. The brass has gotten the message.

Things aren’t any better for Black and other minority officers, men and women. This year Hegseth has vetoed at least 40 high-ranking promotions, half of them women and people of color. White men who’ve also been blocked often have been proponents of diversity. “For too long, we’ve promoted too many uniform leaders for the wrong reasons,” Hegseth lectured military leaders last year. “Based on their race, based on gender quotas, based on historic so-called firsts.”

The combination of Hegseth’s stepped-up interference this year in the military’s promotions process — a thoroughly meritocratic one, despite his claims to the contrary — and his purge since early last year of senior officers is rankling both the military and Congress, Republicans and Democrats, particularly for his and Trump’s evident targeting of women and minorities. But as in most things, Hegseth and his boss are undaunted.

And their white-macho warnings against “woke” are being heard from the Pentagon’s promotion selection boards all the way to America’s streets — the pipelines to military enlistment offices. 

Who could miss Trump and "Whiskey" Hegseth’s message when, just after taking office, they fired General Charles Q. Brown Jr., the second Black man to chair the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and Adm. Lisa Franchetti, the first woman to become the Navy chief?

All told since then, nearly 60% of those fired are female or Black officers, according to Sen. Jack Reed of Rhode Island, a former Army infantry officer who is the top Democrat on the Armed Services Committee. Reed accused Hegseth in a recent hearing of “hollowing out” the senior ranks “while making young officers wonder if they should continue to serve.”

Hegseth is also making would-be enlistees wonder if they should even sign up.

Retired Air Force officer Jessica Ruttenber, who flew in Iraq and Afghanistan, lamented in an online essay in May that a friend’s daughter decided against enlisting given the current climate. Ruttenber decided not to try to change the young woman’s mind, given that “we are watching hard-won progress move backward in real time.” “If I am honest,” she added, “I now find myself wondering: Would I want my own children to enter a system like this❓”

The answer is crucial for a nation with an all-volunteer military force and perennial recruitment worries.

Americans hardly need demographic analyses (there are plenty) to know that minority men and women have signed up to fight for their country in numbers disproportionate to their groups’ shares of the U.S. population. Or that the military ranks include more women than ever before, including in combat — a role (Whiskey) Hegseth as Fox (Fake❗) News pundit long opposed for them.

Suddenly, however, we have another measure of how much women and minorities (and immigrants) in the lower ranks contribute to protecting America, even as Trump and Hegseth are pushing out so many at the top who look like them: the casualty toll in Trump’s war against Iran.

Look at a gallery of the “faces of the fallen” in the Iran operation and other military deployments under Trump. (Never mind Hegseth’s complaint that the media focus on the dead because we’re trying to “make the president look bad.”) About half of the 18 service members who have died since February are women and minorities.

Army Chief Warrant Officer 3 Robert Marzan, 54, a Filipino American from Sacramento, had served more than 30 years when he was one of six service members killed in an Iran drone attack in Kuwait in March. Army Sgt. Michael Emmanuel Swinton, 30, a father from Fayetteville, N.C., had served nearly a decade when he died in July in Iraq.

The six service members killed in March in a plane refueling crash included Air Force Capt. Ariana Savino, 31, of Covington, Wash., a proud Puerto Rican. Her family’s statement surely would make Hegseth wince: “She made it her mission to be a role model for … the next generation of youth, women, and minorities with their hearts set on a career in aviation.” 

Also killed in the crash was Tech Sgt. Tyler Simmons, 28, of Columbus, Ohio. His father, Charles “Mylo” Simmons, praised his son’s expertise as a refueling boom operator: “It’s not usual to see African American men in that position. Made me very proud.”

Trump famously asked about fallen troops, “What was in it for them❓😡” He, and Hegseth, should put that question to Mylo and Cheryl Simmons. The Simmonses would tell them that their only child “was living his best life,” in her words to ABC News, in service to his country.

Not that the conversation would do any good with those two entitled white guys, both of them promoted far beyond either their merit or fitness for office.

Jackie Calmes is an opinion columnist for the Los Angeles Times.

Donald Trump and Pete Hegseth are not telling Americans the truth about the failed war in Iran

Editorial opinion published in the The Virginian-Pilot:

Americans deserve honesty from White House about Iran war

It’s called the fog of war — the uncertainty and confusion that can proliferate during the physical and emotional demands of combat operations. Orders and directions can be muddled, communication can break down, and those in the thick of it can struggle to find their footing.

For the Trump administration, though, events in Iran are more akin to a fog machine of war — from the shifting justifications for attacking in February, to the moving goalposts of what it hopes to achieve, to the deliberate obfuscation of the number of service members harmed.

Americans don’t need access to classified intelligence or after-action reports to better understand what’s happening in this conflict, certainly not anything that could put members of our military at greater risk. But the nation does deserve frank, honest talk from its leaders in order to properly assess the purpose, status and cost of a war it is being asked to support and to fund.

The United States, in partnership with Israel, launched a war against Iran on February 28. Donald Trump, speaking the morning of the initial strikes, called on the Iranian people to take control of the government and urged the armed forces to surrender, saying that “America is with you.”

What Donald Trump promised would be a limited campaign has subsequently proved to be way more complicated than he expected, reflecting why his predecessors never launched such a massive undertaking. His rationale has shifted in the weeks and months since, from halting Iran’s pursuit of nuclear weapons, to removing its leadership and, lately, keeping the Strait of Hormuz open to international shipping.

Trump asked Americans to follow this scattered logic and to trust in his handling of the war. But most aren’t buying into his arguments; polling this month by The Washington Post-Ipsos found 68% said the Iran war was not “worth fighting,” while just 28% said it was. The conflict is more unpopular than the wars in Iraq or Afghanistan were at any point.

On Tuesday, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth testified before Congress that the Pentagon needs $67 billion in emergency funding to pay for operations, despite also claiming that Iran’s military was decimated. NBC News, citing internal DOD numbers, reports the cost of the war is already between $80 billion and $100 billion. Taxpayers will foot that bill, in addition to paying higher costs for gasoline, fertilizer and other goods due to disrupted trade in the Middle East.

And then there are the casualty numbers. This White House isn’t the first to obscure the number of service members killed and wounded in combat operations, but Trump and his allies painted the Afghanistan withdrawal — which Trump negotiated — as a colossal failure when an attack amid that chaotic exit claimed the lives of 13 Americans.

That was unquestionably a tragedy, so how can administration officials square their outrage with this action in Iran, where at least 18 service members have died, including four in the last week❓😔😡😢

One extricated our nation from a decades-long conflict while this campaign seems to be dragging the U.S. further into one.

The Pentagon finally admitted Monday that more than 100 troops were injured in recent attacks, but only when pressed by journalists to release that information to the public. 

A Defense Department spokesperson told The New York Times that “the ‘vast majority’ of … casualties since July 7 involved ‘mild concussions,’ and 96% of those service members have returned to duty.”

That is, indeed, welcome news. But Hampton Roads needs no reminder of the long-term consequences of injuries sustained in battle and the cost of caring for wounded service members, having endured those challenges for decades due to the Afghanistan and Iraq wars.

Americans need a clear-eyed view of Donald Trump's illegal war, as do lawmakers making decisions about how — or whether — to pay for ongoing operations. That responsibility rests with the president, who should turn off the fog machine and level with the public about his war of choice.

Donald Trump and maga Republicans like Senator Susan Collins put Jordanians as targets in the illegal Trump war of choice

Echo report published in The New York Times by Greg Jaffe, Julian E. Barnes and Jonathan Swan

An Iranian attack that killed two 😥 U.S. soldiers and left one service member missing on Friday was the fourth in five days on U.S. forces in Jordan, multiple American officials said. Taken together, the attacks have wounded dozens of U.S. service members and damaged a number of helicopters. (Still waiting for the names of the deceased U.S. military and the person reported missing.) 

(Julie's note:  Donald Trump's illegal war of choice is scary and now with Jordan experiencing Iranian attacks, the war is putting our Jordanian ally in the thick of a war that never should have happened.

Where is Senator Susan Collins❓)

The flurry of attacks and the losses they have caused are a sign that Iranian forces not only still have ample missile stocks but have also become more adept at evading U.S. air defense systems, said the U.S. officials, who were speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss operational matters.

Jordan, which hosts major U.S. air bases, grew in importance in the run-up to and the early days of the war, as the Pentagon shifted a number of troops from Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar to relatively more secure locations in Jordan and Israel. The country’s role in U.S. operations has only increased as other American allies in the region have restricted Washington’s ability to base troops in and fly aircraft over their territories, the U.S. officials said.

In early July, Iran widened its attacks in the region, including Jordan for the first time since Tehran and Washington signed a cease-fire agreement in June.

The U.S. officials offered a recounting of the last five days of Iran’s attacks on Jordan, which the Pentagon has not yet discussed in detail publicly.

The first attack to hit U.S. forces in Jordan struck a residential facility at King Faisal Air Base, wounding as many as five U.S. service members, they said. The second hit a base in eastern Jordan where U.S. Blackhawk helicopters were operating from, damaging a significant number of them.

Then, 48 hours ago, Iranian missiles hit Jordan’s Muwaffaq Salti Air Base in Azraq, which is the same base where the troops were killed on Friday, the officials said. The earlier strike wounded about 20 U.S. troops rushing to take cover in bunkers. No one was killed in that barrage. But on Friday, when the Iranians struck the base again, two U.S. troops were killed and four other service members were injured, according to U.S. officials. Other personnel were evaluated for minor injuries and returned to duty.

The Pentagon declined to comment.

On Friday, the Iranian Army said it had launched a drone attack targeting fuel tanks at the U.S. base in Azraq. The Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps also said it had used missiles and drones to target aircraft shelters at the base, according to Fars News Agency, a semiofficial news outlet affiliated with the Guards.

Jordan’s location allows the United States to conduct “more efficient air operations across Syria, Iraq and the broader region,” said David Deptula, a retired Air Force lieutenant general who was a main architect of the 1991 Persian Gulf air war.

“Friday’s attack was therefore not just an attack on a base,” he said in an email on Saturday. “It was an attack on the U.S. regional coalition and an attempt to make the political cost of hosting American forces greater than the security benefit.”

The U.S. military announced on Saturday evening that it had launched retaliatory strikes to degrade Iran’s threat to shipping in the Strait of Hormuz and to “swiftly punish Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps forces who launched attacks against American service members in Jordan.”

Even before those strikes, Donald Trump signaled that he planned to increase strikes on Iran in the next week and intended to hit more Iranian infrastructure, including bridges, electrical power plants and distribution systems. (So, my question❓Has Iran surrendered yet❓)

Donald Trump has failed miserably in his self declared war with Iran. His lack of strategy is extremely dangerous

Echo message published on X/ (formerly Twitter) by Jürgen Nauditt

Jürgen Nauditt

Stupid Donald Trump, the biggest failed strategist in US history, has plunged America into a strategic catastrophe. During his self-proclaimed “victory parade” against Iran, he squandered at least 45% of the US's precision-guided missile arsenal in just seven weeks—including half of all THAAD* (Terminal High Altitude Area Defense) missiles and nearly 50% of Patriot interceptor missiles. This isn't some fake news blog reporting this, but CNN, citing a CSIS analysis and internal Pentagon data. The result? An “imminent risk” of munitions depletion should a real conflict erupt in the coming years—for example, with China. Trump has ruined the US defense capability for years to come. And for what? For nothing. No regime change in Iran. No destroyed nuclear program. No strategic breakthrough. Just a shaky ceasefire that gives the mullahs time to rearm while America stands naked. 

Trump, the great (flunkie❗) “Art of the Deal” master, has once again only produced hot air – and in doing so, burned through the most expensive and scarce weapons in the USA like a pubescent boy with fireworks.

*The Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) is a premier U.S. Army anti-ballistic missile system designed to destroy short-, medium-, and intermediate-range missiles in their terminal phase using kinetic "hit-to-kill" technology. Deployed since 2008, and developed by Lockheed Martin, it is a highly mobile system that intercepts threats both inside and outside the atmosphere.

#ImpeachTrumpNOW❗💢

Donald Trump and maga Republicans are funding very unpopular and expensive failed military operations

 Opinion echo by Nicholas Kristof published in The New York Times:  The 💲1.3-Million-a-Minute War. And no plan for the undefined expensive military operations❗

Let’s ponder for a moment the vast sums that we’re pouring into the war with Iran.

The Pentagon has requested 💲200 billion (more than $1,400 per American household) to fund the war, but even that understates the total cost.

Linda Bilmes, a Harvard expert on financing war, told me that most of the costs will arrive later. 

For example, any soldier who develops a medical disorder or aggravates an existing one will receive lifelong benefits and medical care. If today’s troops claim such benefits at the same rate as those who participated in the 1990-91 gulf war, that alone would eventually cost at least 💲600 billion, Bilmes said. Not to mention, of course, the human toll of all of this.

All told, she expects this Iran war to cost taxpayers more than 💲1 trillion.

Here are some ideas of what the war money could be used for instead. My calculations are conservative, based on Pentagon reporting that the first six days of the war cost 💲11.3 billion — and even that incomplete tally amounted to more than 💲1.3 million a minute.

• For a bit more than two weeks of this war, we could offer free college education to every American family earning less than 💲125,000 annually, at a cost of around 💲30 billion a year.

• For less than three weeks of war, or 💲35 billion, we could run a nationwide pre-K program for 3- and 4-year-olds.

• For 💲75 million, about an hour’s worth of war, we could provide three books free to every child in America who is living under the poverty line, according to Kyle Zimmer of First Book, a nonprofit that works on early literacy. Research suggests that books like these can help get children reading and improve their outcomes.

• A woman dies in the United States every two hours, on average, from cervical cancer. Screening all uninsured women who need it would cost perhaps 💲1 billion and could save hundreds of lives, according to Dr. Linda Eckert, a cervical cancer expert at the University of Washington. That’s less than 13 hours of the war bill.

• We could get glasses to all 2.3 million low-income schoolchildren in the United States who need them but don’t have them. The base cost would be about 💲300 million, according to Vision to Learn, a nonprofit that does this work. The bill would be what we spend on four hours of this war.

• For about 💲34 billion a year, less than three weeks of war, we could restore health insurance subsidies that the Trump administration let expire last year. One analysis predicted an additional 8,800 preventable American deaths as a result.

The war money would save even more lives if we allocated part of it abroad. Indeed, we spent more on the first three days of war than we spent (💲4 billion) on all humanitarian aid in 2025. Consider what we could achieve internationally:

• For $400 million or less, a bit more than five hours of war, we could deworm all children in need worldwide, according to Evidence Action, a nonprofit that works on deworming. This would result in stronger, healthier children and adults.

• For 💲380 million, less than five hours of war, we could provide vitamin A supplementation for the 190 million children who need it. Helen Keller Intl, a nonprofit engaged in this work, says this would prevent up to 480,000 child deaths each year and virtually eliminate blindness from vitamin A deficiency.

• About one day’s worth of war spending could save more than 350,000 lives from malaria, through a rigorously studied screening and prevention program, according to Esther Duflo, an economist at M.I.T.’s Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab.

• For 💲4.3 billion, less than three days of the war bill, we could largely end the most terrible form of malnutrition, called severe wasting. That would save about 1.5 million children’s lives annually. We would accomplish something historic: For the first time in the history of humanity, large numbers of children would no longer be starving to death.

We have to know that numbers like this are never totally
reliable — but that’s true of military costs as well. George W. Bush’s administration in 2003 put the cost of the Iraq war at 💲40 billion; it ended up costing perhaps 💲3 trillion.

Moreover, my figures are based on only the initial costs of the Iran war. And even the estimate of 💲1 trillion for the full cost doesn’t include the bills for more expensive gasoline we’re now paying and for pricier fertilizer and food that are likely soon.

If we reallocated this war spending to needs at home and abroad, Americans would have access to school from pre-K to college and would have health insurance, and large numbers of children worldwide would not starve to death — and we would still have billions of dollars left over.

We can cough up the cash when there’s political will, such as to drop bombs halfway around the world. But where is the political will to get people health care or education, to build rather than to destroy❓

I’ve chosen my 2026 win-a-trip winner, Brunella Tipismana Urbano, and she’ll join me on a reporting trip this year (possibly to Bangladesh). Tipismana Urbano has had a remarkable journey already: She grew up in Peru, taught herself English and will graduate this year from Yale with almost perfect grades while working as a student journalist, writing for Bloomberg and penning a novel. The runners-up are Kaja Andrić of New York University, Michal Ruprecht of the Wayne State University School of Medicine and Jessica Sachs of the University of Colorado, Boulder. Congratulations to all.

Postscript by the author Nicholas Kristof: In this column, I try to make the point that the military toolbox, while essential, is an exceptionally expensive one (in both dollars and lives alike) — and we shouldn't pour money into wars without pondering how else that money could be used to build rather than destroy. The 💲2 trillion that went to the Iraq War, for example, could have gone to creating nationwide pre-K and child care, or universal health care, or free college. So now, as we pour billions of dollars into the Iran War, where do you dream the money could go instead❓

Maine Writer- And Republicans are completely complicit with this "no way to win" wasteful stratagy.

Donald Trump and maga Republicans are to blame for tragic murder war crimes killing Iranian school children

US bombing of elementary Iranian school should make members of Congress sick 🤢— and make them investigate. The deliberate murder of school children is a heinous evil war crime. Echo editorial published in the Boston Globe with excerpts from WRAL News in North Caroline..

This kind of war crimes attack against innocent children can’t be brushed aside as just the unfortunate cost of war.

On Feb. 28, 2026, when the Donald Trump announced that the United States and Israel had launched their war against Iran. Tragically, the deadliest strike in terms of civilian casualties was on a girl’s elementary school in the town of Minab, Iran. The attack killed at least 175 people, most of whom were children.

In the immediate aftermath, neither Israel nor the United States took responsibility for the attack. 

But, a New York Times visual investigation found that the school appeared to be targeted by a precision strike and that the United States was the likely culprit.

And still, Donald Trump tried to pin blame on Iran. “In my opinion, based on what I’ve seen, that was done by Iran,” Trump told reporters. “We think it was done by Iran, because they’re very inaccurate with their munitions, they have no accuracy whatsoever, it was done by Iran.” (But recently released satellite images taken and published by a private company shows Iranians were successful using strategically targeted missile attacks.  Satellite images are beginning to be released giving a glimpse into the toll of the Iran war, with ships ablaze in an Iranian port and destroyed buildings at an American base. - reports WRAL News., in North Carolina.  Information has been scarce about the damage being done across the Middle East, particularly when it’s inside closed military facilities, since the start of the war on Feb. 28. Amd major impact seen at 5th Fleet headquarters in Bahrain.  The island kingdom of Bahrain, home of the U.S. Navy’s 5th Fleet, saw heavy Iranian fire targeting both military bases and oil installations. A March 1st, image shot by Planet Labs shows a major building at the base destroyed, as well as two radomes — geodesic domes covering radar antennas — likely by Iranian missile and drone fire.

The Navy has not offered a clear breakdown about the damage done so far at the base, but Iran repeatedly claimed to have attacked it. Online videos also shows incoming fire targeting the base. During the 12-day war in June, Iran attacked and destroyed a similar radome at Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar, used for secure communications.)

Among of the alarming findings that emerged in the aftermath of the strike on the Iranian children's school is that it could have been a result of outdated data. The school was adjacent to an Iranian naval base, which was the target of the US strikes that day. According to The New York Times, the school at one point was part of the naval base but has since at least 2016 been partitioned off. 

If that’s true, then why is the US military operating on information that’s at least a decade old❓

During the bombing campaign against what was then Yugoslavia in 1999, the United States accidentally bombed the Chinese embassy in Belgrade, killing three and creating an international uproar. Officials blamed that mishap on outdated maps — so why is that still a problem almost 30 years later?

There are also questions about whether artificial intelligence played a role in the deadly strike.

Congress can maximize pressure on the Trump administration to provide answers by using the power of the purse. It’s expected that the White House will require supplemental funding for the war — at least an additional $50 billion — and lawmakers should pause before considering such requests. They should demand answers and ensure that the Trump administration doesn’t stonewall any investigations and that taxpayer money isn’t spent funding operations that result in deadly attacks like the tragic one on the elementary school.

Getting to the bottom of this should not be a partisan issue. Republicans have also expressed their concerns about the strike on the school. “I think it was a horrible, horrible mistake,” Republican Senator John Kennedy, of Louisiana, said. “And when you make a mistake, you ought to admit it.”

Republicans need to work with Democrats to get the answers. After all, even if Republican lawmakers fully support Trump’s decision to go to war with Iran, it is still their responsibility to ensure that the United States is accurate and precise in targeting enemy combatants, not innocent civilians, let alone children. If this strike highlights something systemically wrong with the Pentagon’s operations, that would make clear that the longer this war lasts, the more likely it is that strikes like the one on the elementary school could happen again. For supporters of the war, that’s not only a moral stain but also a strategic blunder that would only strengthen popular support for the Iranian regime and further exacerbate anti-Western sentiments. And without Republican leadership, neither Congress nor the public will get the answers needed from the White House.

This is also an opportunity to review the Pentagon’s standards and procedures, especially under Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth (Whiskey Pete💢🤢). 

Since Hegseth took this role, he has been boasting about US military strength and adamantly arguing that the United States should be less cautious when it comes to considering standard rules of engagement and international law. When Trump rebranded the Department of Defense into the Department of War, Hegseth insisted that the Pentagon will focus on “maximum lethality, not tepid legality. Violent effect, not politically correct.”

It’s worth digging into whether standards under Hegseth have indeed been lowered, and if so to what degree. It’s already been reported that he gutted the offices that would have been tasked with probing situations like the strike on the elementary school. What else has happened under Hegseth that could minimize accountability and potentially make strikes like this one all the more likely in the future❓

This is also an opportunity to review the Pentagon’s standards and procedures, especially under Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth. 

Since Hegseth took this role, he has been boasting about US military strength and adamantly arguing that the United States should be less cautious when it comes to considering standard rules of engagement and international law. When Trump rebranded the Department of Defense into the Department of War, Hegseth insisted that the Pentagon will focus on “maximum lethality, not tepid legality. Violent effect, not politically correct.”

It’s worth digging into whether standards under Hegseth have indeed been lowered, and if so to what degree. It’s already been reported that he gutted the offices that would have been tasked with probing situations like the strike on the elementary school. 

What else has happened under Hegseth that could minimize accountability and potentially make strikes like this one all the more likely in the future❓

Those are just some of the issues Congress should be investigating. And when lawmakers get answers, they must share them with the public. We might be at war, but we should still hold the Pentagon to the highest of standards. (After all, Hegseth is wastefully spending our hard earned tax💲 money 💰)