The Pentagon said on Friday there had been no effort to play down or delay the release of information on concussive injuries from Iran’s Jan. 8 attack on a base hosting US forces in Iraq, saying the public learned just hours after the defense secretary.
US President Donald Trump, Defense Secretary Mark Esper, and others throughout the US government for a week had said that Iran’s attack on bases in Iraq, in retaliation for the killing of an Iranian general, had not killed or injured any US servicemembers.
That is no longer true, the Pentagon now acknowledges. But US military leadership in Washington only became aware on Thursday that 11 US service members were flown out of Iraq due to concussive symptoms, Pentagon spokesman Jonathan Hoffman said.
“This idea that there was an effort to de-emphasize injuries for some sort of amorphous political agenda doesn’t hold water,” Reuters quoted Hoffman as saying.
But the disclosure of the concussive symptoms late on Thursday, more than a week after the attack itself, is likely at a minimum to open a debate about the Pentagon’s longstanding treatment of brain injury as a different class of wounds that it says do not require immediate reporting up the chain of command.
US military has to immediately report incidents threatening life, limb or eyesight. But suspected brain injury, which can take time to manifest and diagnose, does not have that urgent requirement.
Esper was only informed on Thursday that the service members were flown out of Iraq to receive additional screening and treatment in bases in Kuwait and Germany, the Pentagon said.
The first U.S. service member was flown out of Iraq on Jan. 10 for further evaluation, while others were flown out on Jan. 15.
