Pete Hegseth, the self-styled “Secretary of War,” held forth at the Pentagon in what was billed as a press conference but which reads more like a war rally with explicit religious overtones. Hegseth explicitly distanced this aggressive war on Iran from the Iraq and Afghanistan wars by stressing that there’s no “nation building” going on. But he ignored what they all have in common: Each one was built on a shifting pile of lies and demonization that was used to justify them.
“Our generation understands this fight,” Hegseth claimed at the outset. “For 47 years, these barbaric savages” have killed “thousands” of American troops and are in a “race to a nuclear bomb” which Trump “will never allow.” He accused Iran of striking schools, hospitals, and innocent civilians in general “because they know their military is being systematically degraded and annihilated.”
As for Operation Epic Fury, “we are winning with an overwhelming and unrelenting focus on our objectives,” which are, “One, destroy their missile stockpiles, their missile launchers, and their defense industrial base, missiles and their ability to make them. Two, destroy their navy. And three, permanently deny Iran nuclear weapons forever.”
