Pete Hegseth, who styles himself “Secretary of War,” declared this morning at a Pentagon press conference that “America is winning decisively, devastatingly, and without mercy, in the war against Iran. He called the military campaign “Historic really, only the United States of America could lead this.” Not only that “But when you add the Israeli Defense Forces, a devastatingly capable force, the combination is sheer destruction for our radical Islamist Iranian adversaries.”
Hegseth’s macho display was notable for his utter lack of humanity. “We’re playing for keeps,” he said. “Our war fighters have maximum authorities granted personally by the president and yours truly. Our rules of engagement are bold, precise, and designed to unleash American power, not shackle it. This was never meant to be a fair fight. And it is not a fair fight. We are punching them while they’re down, which is exactly how it should be.” This war is like the shock and awe of Iraq in 2003, he said, but “minus Paul Bremer and the nation building.” In other words, there’s not even a pretense of concern for the future of the country as there was with Iraq, fraudulent as that was.
Hegseth, with Gen. Dan Caine, chairman of the Joint Chiefs, at his side, claimed that the US military has such superiority that US strike aircraft can now fly into Iranian airspace loaded with GPS-guided gravity bombs to drop on their targets. Hegseth also announced that a US Navy submarine sank by torpedo fire an Iranian frigate off the coast of Sri Lanka. At the same time, he also deflected questions spurred by media reports about shortages of air defense missiles. “We have sufficient precision munitions for the task at hand, both on the offense and defense,” Hegseth said.
With unrestrained rules of engagement there’s a high risk that the U.S. military will commit war crimes, such as Saturday’s bombing of a girls school in southern Iran which reportedly killed upwards of 150 girls aged 7-12. When asked about that Hegseth would only say “all I can say is that we’re investigating that.”
